Contents:

The Story of the Good Little Boy .......................................................................................................................1

Once there was a good little boy by the name of Jacob Blivens. He always obeyed his parents, no matter how

absurd and unreasonable their demands were; and he always learned his book, and never was late at

Sabbathschool. He would not play hookey, even when his sober judgment told him it was the most

profitable thing he could do. None of the other boys could ever make that boy out, he acted so strangely. He

couldn't lie, no matter 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 curious ways that Jacob had, surpassed everything.

He wouldn't play marbles on Sunday, he wouldn't rob birds' nests, he wouldn't give hot pennies to

organgrinders' monkeys; he didn't seem to take any interest in any kind of rational amusement. So the other

boys used to try to reason it out and come 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 never allowed any harm to come to him.

This good little boy read all the Sundayschool books; they were his greatest delight. This was the whole

secret of it. He believed in the good little boys they put in the Sundayschool books; he had every confidence

in them. He longed to come across one of them alive once; but he never did. They all died before his time,

maybe. 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

boy always died in the last chapter, and there was a picture of the funeral, with all his relations and the

Sundayschool children standing 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. He

was always headed off in this way. He never could see one of those good little boys on account of his always

Jacob had a noble ambition to be put in a Sundayschool book. He wanted to be put in, with pictures

representing him gloriously declining to lie to his mother, and her weeping for joy about it; and pictures

representing him standing on the doorstep giving a penny to a poor beggarwoman 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 bad boy who always lay in wait for him around the corner as he came

from school, and welted him over the head with a lath, and then chased him home, saying, "Hi! hi!" as he

proceeded. That was the ambition of young Jacob Blivens. He wished to be put in a Sundayschool book. It

made him feel a little uncomfortable sometimes when he reflected that the good little boys always died. He

loved to live, you know, and this was the most unpleasant feature about being a Sundayschoolbook boy.

He knew it was not healthy to be good. He knew it was more fatal than consumption to be so supernaturally

good as the boys in the books were; he knew that none of them had ever been able to stand it long, and it

pained him to think that if they put him in a book he wouldn't ever see it, or even if they did get the book out

before he died it wouldn't be popular without any picture of his funeral in the back part of it. It couldn't be

much of a Sundayschool book that couldn't tell about the advice he gave to the community when he was

dying. So at last, of course, he had to make up his mind to do the best he could under the circumstances to

live right, and hang on as long as he could, and have 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 little boys in the books. They always had a good time, and the bad boys had the

broken legs; but in his case there was a screw loose somewhere, and it all happened just the other way. When

he found Jim Blake stealing apples, and went under the 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 his

arm, and Jim wasn't hurt at all. Jacob couldn't understand that. There wasn't anything in the books like it.

And once, when some bad boys pushed a blind man over in the mud, and Jacob ran to help him up and

receive his blessing, the blind man did not give him any blessing at all, but whacked him over the head with

his stick and said he would like to catch him shoving him again, and then pretending to help him up. This was

One thing that Jacob wanted to do was to find a lame dog that hadn't any place to stay, and was hungry and

persecuted, and bring him home and pet him and have that dog's imperishable gratitude. And at last he found

one and was happy; and he brought him home and fed him, but when he was going to pet him the dog flew at

him and tore all the clothes off him except those that were in front, and made a spectacle of him that was

astonishing. He examined authorities, but he could not understand the matter. It was of the same breed of

dogs that was in the books, but it acted very differently. Whatever this boy did he got into trouble. The very

things the boys in the books got rewarded for turned out to be about the most unprofitable things he could

Once, when he was on his way to Sundayschool, he saw some bad boys starting off pleasuring in a sailboat.

He was filled with consternation, because he knew from his reading that boys who went sailing on Sunday

invariably got drowned. So he ran out on a raft to warn them, but a log turned with him and slid him into the

river. A man got him out pretty soon, and the doctor pumped the water out of him, and gave him a fresh start

with his bellows, but he caught cold and lay sick abed nine weeks. But the most unaccountable thing about it

was that the bad boys in the boat had a good time all day, and then reached home alive and well in the most

surprising manner. Jacob Blivens said there was nothing like these things in the books. He was perfectly

When he got well he was a little discouraged, but he resolved to keep on trying anyhow. He knew 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 he hoped to be able to make a record yet if he could hold on till his time was fully up. If everything

He examined his authorities, and found that it was now time for him to go to sea as a cabinboy. He called on

a shipcaptain and made his application, and when the captain asked for his recommendations he proudly

drew out a tract and pointed to the word, "To Jacob Blivens, from his affectionate teacher." But the captain

was a coarse, vulgar man, and he said, "Oh, that be blowed! that wasn't any proof that he knew how to wash

dishes or handle a slushbucket, and he guessed he didn't want him." This was altogether the most

extraordinary thing that ever happened to Jacob in all his life. A compliment from a teacher, on a tract, had

never failed to move the tenderest emotions of shipcaptains, and open the way to all offices of honor and

profit in their gift it never had in any book that ever he had read. He could hardly believe his senses.

This boy always had a hard time of it. Nothing ever came out according to the authorities with him. At last,

one day, when he was around hunting up bad little boys to admonish, he found a lot of them in the old

ironfoundry fixing up a little joke an fourteen or fifteen dogs, which they had tied together in long

procession, and were going to ornament with empty nitroglycerin 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 Tom Jones. But just

at that moment Alderman McWelter, full of wrath, stepped in. All the bad boys ran away, but Jacob Blivens

rose in conscious innocence and began one of those stately little Sundayschoolbook speeches which

always commence with "Oh, sir!" in dead opposition to the fact that no boy, good or bad, ever starts a remark

with "Oh, sir." But the alderman never waited to hear the rest. He took Jacob Blivens by the ear and turned

him around, and hit him a whack in the rear with the flat of his hand; and in an instant that good little boy

shot out through the roof and soared away toward 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 ironfoundry left on the

face of the earth; and, as for young Jacob Blivens, he never got a chance to make his last dying speech after

all his trouble fixing it up, unless he made it to the birds; because, although the bulk of him came down all

right in a treetop 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

Thus 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. His case is truly remarkable. It will probably never

* This glycerin catastrophe is borrowed from a floating newspaper item, whose author's name I would give if