Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 May 1884 — THE BAD BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE BAD BOY.

: ‘I am disgusted with you again,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he made his regular call one morning, Yrith a scratch a rose his cheek and a strip of court plaster on his nose. “I lioar.i you had got into a tight with another i bov about oae of these girls that graduated from the Industrial School, who was sent there for being incorrigible, and after yon had whipped the boy you' Yvalkeil home with the girl, in broad daylight, right before folks. Ain’t yon ashamed to associate with such people? Bah, you are the most changeable boy I ever see; one day you are a regular encyclopedia, and a Florence Nightingale and a philanthropist, and the next day yon are a Jolm Sulli\-an, a regular tough. What would your Sunday school teacher have said if he had seen you lighting with that boy, and going to her boarding place with that awful girl?”

“Oi, that is all right. My Sunday school teacher he heard about the row and he came down to our house and asked me about it, aud Yvlien I told bim the particulars he said I onglit to have knocked the neck all off the boy, aud that I did perfectly light, and he got the humane society to giv e me this letter of thanks,” and the boy pulled a letter out of his. pocket quite proudly and showed it to the grocery man. “The Sunday School teacher ain’t worrying about me half as much as you are. You see that little girl used to live near us, and she was such as*veet little th.ng that everybody loved her. Three years ago her mother died, aud her pa was al l broke up, and he drank a good deal, and then he got married again, and the woman he married was the meanest stepmother that ever was. 0, you have no idea how mean she was to that little girl. She would maul the girl, apd drive her outdoors, and the little one slept in alleys, and if her pa said anything about it liis nevv wife would knock him silly. He didn’t have no ‘sand’ at all, and didn’t dare stand up for his oyvu flesh and blood. Tlie little girl got about one square meal in four days I guess, and she looked dirty, and her stepmother said she was a disgrace to the family, and she lied about the girl to her father, and one day Yvhen he Yvas full they both Yvent to a justiie and sWore that the gnl was incorrigible, and she was sent to the girls’ reform school. Talk about justice, that was the greatest piece of injustice that ever was. The poor little thing found that the industrial school was a regular home, nearer to a home than anything she had seen since her mother died, and she was liappy, and a great favorite, and learned everything. She was never bad at all, only in the Yvay of tlie goldarned stepmother. No one but the stepmother ever said a Yvord against

her. The good ladies that manage the school got mashed on the little girl, and knew she was a perfect little angel, and they got her a chance to knit silk socks and mittens for a fancy store, and got her a place to board, and made her father help pay her l>o «rd, but he had to do it unbeknown to his new wife, or she Yvould have cut a gash in him with an ax. This hoy that I had the fight with knew her as xvell as I did, when she lived at home, and knew she never did a wrong, but he pfetended to think that, because she had been an inmate of the industrial school, that she must be tnff, and he used to lay for her on the corner when she went out to walk for a rest, or Yvhen she went to carry her socks to the store, and he Yvoula make fun of her and call her names, and ask if he couldn’t go home with her, and he twitted her of being a reform school bird, and everything. She told me abont it once, Yvhen ma and me met her on the street, and ma bent over her and hugged her and cried, ’cause her mother used to be ma’s chum when they attended a girls’ college years ago, afore the flood, pa says. Ma told me I ought to see that boy and talk to him about it, and I asked ma what I would do if he wouldn’t stop bothering the girl, because he didn’t have any heart, and ma she was mad in a minute, and she said, ‘Hennery, do as you would if this little girl were your sister.’ Well, that settled his ha-h, and I told the little girl not to cry any more abont it, and he wouldn’t bother her no more. So ’tother day I was coming along the street, and, I saw that boy picking on her, and she tried to get by him, and he got right in front of her, and just as I came up behind him he called her a name that no boy ought to ever call anybody’s sister. She looked by him, at me, and her face looked almost as pale and sorrowful as her dead mother’s face did the day of the funeral, when all us Sunday-school children saw her, before the coffin was closed, and the girl said, ‘O, Hennery, my friend, I do not deserve this, and it will kill me. ’ The boy looked around at me Yvitlra leer that reminded me of the villain in the play, and said, ‘You mind your own busines.’ I was so mad that my knuckles cracked like when you twist your fingers out of joint, and I thought it was my business, ’cause ma set me up in the business herself, and before the girl could say anything, I began to mop the sidewalk with him. and break pickets off the fence with him, end I bumped his head on’the curb, and kicked him in the watch pocket, and then he but before I let him up he promised never to insult her or any other girl again, and he begged her pardon, and then I borrowed her handkerchief to wipe the blood off my nose, and I walked home with her. That is all, only I went right home and told ma and pa, and they was glad, and the boy’s pa came over to our house to complain of me, and pa was going to lick him, and the minister heard about it, and he came np to onr house and put his hand on my head and said he didn’t believe in fighting, but there were times when nothing but a fight, seemed to be appropriate for the occasion, and he put his arm around mfe and hugged me till he burst one of my ribs. And ever since that fight that poor little girl has gone abotit her work singing, and she goes to the store in safety, looking as happy as a little queen, smiling and joyous, and she says she knpws her mother in heaven was looking down and saw that fight, for she sees her in her (freams every night, and her mother’s face looks happier than it has any time since she moved to heaven. Say,

do yon believe people up ip. heaven ! havespy-glasses strong enough to look down here, through the clouds, and se©i a couple of lnm scrapping on the sidewalk? Darned if I do.” ! “0, I don’t know,” said the grocery man, as he wiped a tear from his whiskers on his shirt-sleeve, “bat I knoW one thing. lam the meanest fool in this town, to keep finding fault with you. Yon coine out right evorv time, find I syvoyv, if you hadn’t licked that boy I Yvouhl lia\'e licked you, ” and the bad boy said something about these post mprtem fighters, but are always talking about fighting the next week, but who never get there at the right time, and he went ont, whistling as usual, happy as a bad boy could be.— Peck*# Sun.