Rensselaer Union, Volume 2, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 May 1870 — The Story of the Good Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper. [ARTICLE]

The Story of the Good Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper.

BY MARK TWAIN.

Onck there was a good little boy by the name of Jacob Blivcns. He always obeyed his parents, no matter how absurdatul unreasonable their demands were,; and he always learned his book, and never was lateat Babbath sfhooL He would not play hookey, even when Ills sober judgment told him it was the most profitable thiim he ( cpuld do. None of the other boys comtl "ever make that boy out, he acted so strangely, lie * wouldn’t Ate, no faatter how convenient It was. He just said it was wrong to lie, and that was sufficient for him. And he was so honest that he was simply ridiculous. The curi ous ways that Jacob had surpassed everything. He wouldn’t pbvy marbles on Sunday, he wouldn’t rob birds’ nests, he give hot pennies to organ-grind; ers’ monkeys; he didn’t seem to taks-eqy. interest in any kind of rational amusemeat.' Bo ihe other hoys hsed to try to reason it out and Qonje.to an understanding of him, but they couldn’t arrive at any satisfactory conclusion ; as I said before, they could only figure out a sort of vague idea that he was “afflicted” and so they took him under their protection, and ncver tdjowed any harm to come to him. This good little boy read all the Sunday school books; they were his greatest delight. This was the whole Secret of it. |le believed in the good little boys they fiut in the Sunday school books ; he had very confidence in them. He longed to come across one of them alive, once; but lie never did. They all died 4>efore his time, may be. Whenever he read about a particularly good one, he turned over quickly to the end to see what became of him, because he wanted to travel thousands of miles and gaze on him; but it wasn’t any use; that good little hoy always died in the last chapter* and there was a picture of the funeral, with all his relations and the,Sunday school children Kt iihding around the grave in pantaloons that were too short, and bonnets that were too large, and everybody crying into handkerchiefs that had as much as a yard and a half of stuff in them. lie was always headed off in this way. He never could see one of those good little beys, on account bf his always dying in the last chapter. * Jacob had a noble ambition to be put in a Sunday-school book. lie wanted to be put in, with pictures representing him gloriously declining to lie to his mother, and she weeping for joy about it; abd pictures representing him standing on the door step giving a penny to a poor beggar-woman with six children, and telling her to spend it freely, but not to be extravagant, because extravagance is a sin; and pictures of him magnanimously refusing to tell on the had boy who always lay in wait for him around the corner, as he came from school, and welted hifa over the head with a lath, and then chased him home, saying, “Hi I hi!” as he proceeded. That was the ambition of young Jacob Blivens. He wished to be put in a Sundayschool hook. It- made him feel a little uncomfortable sometimes when ho reflected that the good little boys always died. He loved to live, you know, and this was the most unpleasant feature about being a Sunday-school book boy. He knew it was not healthy to be good. He knew it was more fatal tiffin consump- - tion to be so sunernaturally good as the boys in the books were; he knew that npne of them hftd over been able to stand it long, and it pained him to think that if they put him in a book lie wouldn’t ever sec it, or even if they did get the book out before he died, it wouldn’t be popular witllbut afiyplcture of his', funeral in the back part of It. It couldn’t be much of a Sunday-school book that couldn’t tell about.tM advice be gave tp tho (jigifmi'nity when he was dying. So, at last, of ceurte, lie had to make up his mind to do the best ho could under the circumstances; —tp live right, and hang on as long as he could, and nave- his dying speech all ready when his time came. But somehow, nothing ever went right with this good little boy; nothing ever turned out with him the way it turned out with the good litfje bays in the books. They always had ■ a good time, and the bad boys had the broken legs j but in his casethere wan,a screw loose somewhere, happened Just the other way. When he found Jim Blake stealing apples, and wont under tho tree to read to him about the bad little boy who fell out of a neighbor’s apple tree, and broke his arm, Jim fell out of the tree too, but he fell on him and broke hi* i arm, and Jim *vrasn*t hntt at all. Jacob couldn’t under* stand that. There wasn’t anything in the books like it. t And oncer when seine bad boyfc pushed a blind man over in tho mud, and Jabob ran to help him up and receive his'blestirrg, the blind m*ndffl not give him any Messing at all; but Whacked him over the head with his stick and said he wottjd like to catch htyn shoving Mm again anil then pretending to help* him up. This WaS hdt in accordance wjth any of the banks. Jacob looked thfiih all oyer to see. thing that Jaoob wanted to do was to find a lame dog that hadn’t any place to

Sir, and was hungry and persecuted, and ug him home, ana him and have that dog’s «rfpet£»l»bb gftflLudhC A»d at last ho found one, and was happy; and Ue brought him home and fed him, but when be the dog fiew at him and t?re all the clothes off hjm except those that were itt FrOnt, and mdde & spectacle of him that was astonSsitaaft? ms? of the same breed of dogs that was in the books, but Ht,.acted very differently. Whatever tlrfa bby did,- he got into trouble. The very things the boys in the books -goi tevnanded sos tmrjjad out to be, about the most unprofitable things ho could invest In. , . y , Once when he was on his way to Sunday School he saw Borne bad boys starting off pleasuring In a sail-boat. He was filled with consternation, because he knew from his reading that boys who went sailing on .Sunday, invariably gpt deowned. So he ran out on a raft to warn them, but a log turned with him and slid him into the flyer. gfs*d*im out pretty soon, and Are doctor pumped The water' out of him and gave him a fresh start with hifi bellows, hut he caught cold and, lay sick abed nine weeks. But the' m6st unaccountable thing about it was that the bad ReySi In tHe bAak had a gded time all day, and then reached home alive and well, in the? unat sunni*ing manner. Jacob Blivens said there was nothing like these things in the bookg. He was per-, fectly dumbfounded. When he got well he was a little discouraged, but he jrcsolved.to keep on trying, anyhow. He kifew that so far his experiences wouldn’t do to go in a book, but he hadn’t yet reached the allotted term of life for good little: boys, and ha hoped to be able to make a record yet, if he could hold on uutjl big time w.as fully »e had his dying speech to fall back on. lie examined his authorities, and found that it was now time to go tq sqa as a cabin boy.” “He called ’ oil “‘a .4Mp' c*iptrin and made his application,.and when the captain asked Tm'piS Tocdinmehrliftion he proudly drew out a tract and pointed to the .words“To Jacob Blivens, _ from his. affectionate “teacher. Bui the captain was,a coarge, vulgar pum, and.be sajd, “Oh,'that' bo biowerfJ that wasn’t proof that he knew how to wash dishes or handle a slush" bfidket, and he gnefeCd he didn’t want, him,” This was altogether the tridst ektraordinrfry 1 \htbg that had 4 ever happened to Jacob in all his life. A compliment from n teacher, on a tract, had never failed to move the tenderest -emotions of ship captains and open the way to all or honor’ rtfid '•piwfit Jh their gift—it never had in any book that everbad rsad. He.could hardly, believe his senses. This boy always had a hard time of it Nothing fcvdr csone Out -according to, the authorities with him. At last, one day, when he was around hunting up bad little boy* to admonish, bo found a lot of them in the old iron foundry fixing up a little Joke on fourteen or fifteen dogs, which they had tied together in long procession, and were going to ornament with empty nitm-glycerine cans made fast to their tails. Jacob’s heart was touched. He sat down on one of those cans—for he never minded grease when duty was before him —and he took hold of the foremost dog by the collar, and turned his reproving eye upon wicked Jones. BcR just at that moment Alderman McWefter. full of wrath, stepped in. All the bad boys rim away; but Jacob Bilvensrosc in conscious innocence, and began one of those stately little Sunday school book speeches, which always comifienckvfcith “Ob, sir!" hi dead opposition to the fact that no boy, good or bad, over starts a remark with “Oh, sir l” But the Alderman never waited to hear the rest. He took Jacob Bivens by the ear,, and turned him around, and hit him a whack in the rear with the fiat of his hand; and in an instant that good little boy shot out through the roof and soared away towards the sun, with the fragments of those fifteen dogs stringing after him like the tail of a kite. And there wasn’t a sign of that Alderman or that old iron foundry left on the face of the earth; and as for young Jacob Blivens, he never got a chance to make bis last dying speech after all his Rouble fixing it up, unless he made it to the birds; because, although the bulk of him came down all right in a tree-top in an adjoining county, the rest of him was apportioned around among four Townships, and so they had to hold five inquests on him to find out whether he was dead or not, and how it occurred-: You never saw a boy scattered so. Thua perished the good little boy who did the best he could, but didn’t come out according to the books. Every, boy who ever did as he did prospered except him. Ilis case is truly remarkable. It will probably never bo aocounted for.— The Galaxy. \