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Illustration: "A NAUTICAL EXPEDITION."
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THE WORST BOY IN TOWN
by
JOHN HABBERTON
Author of "Barton Experiment," "Other People's Children,"
etc., etc.
New York
G. P. Putnam's Sons,
182 Fifth Avenue
1880
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright by
G. P. Putnam's Sons,
1880.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO VERY BAD BOYS,
AND TO THE FINE OLD FELLOWS
WHO ONCE WERE CALLED VERY BAD BOYS,
THIS BOOK IS SYMPATHETICALLY DEDICATED
BY THE AUTHOR.
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CONTENTS.
-------
CHAPTER
I—A NAUTICAL EXPEDITION
II—A CORNER IN WHISKEY
III—INJURY AND RESTITUTION
IV—SHARP AXES AND SHARPER WITS
V—EXPERIMENTS IN GRAVITATION
VI—THOUGHTS OF REFORM
VII—IN TROUBLE AGAIN
VIII—FUGITIVES FROM JUSTICE
IX—THE STOOL OF REPENTANCE
X—YOUNG AMERICA IN POLITICS
XI—A QUIET LITTLE GAME
XII—SWEET SOLACE
XIII—THE BOY WHO WAS NOT AFRAID
XIV—PAYING FOR A SPREE
XV—RUNNING AWAY
XVI—LOSING A REPUTATION
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CHAPTER I.
A NAUTICAL EXPEDITION.
"You're the worst boy in town!"
The speaker was Farmer Parkins, and the person addressed was Jack
Wittingham, only son of the most successful physician in Doveton.
Farmer Parkins had driven to town quite early in the morning to make
some necessary purchases, and he had been followed by his faithful
yellow dog, Sam, who had been improving the opportunity to make some
personal calls and tours of observation. One of these last-named
recreations carried him near the back door of a butcher shop to which
Jack had gone to deliver an order for his mother. Adjacent to the
butcher's place of business was the shop of the village tinman, and
behind this were strewn sundry kitchen utensils which had proved to be
too badly damaged to be mended. Jack had noticed the dog when that
animal first put in his appearance in search of a scrap of meat or
bone, and had thereafter observed his motions with that peculiar
interest which dogs seem always to inspire in boys. Then he happened
to see a very dilapidated tea-kettle behind the tin-shop, and when
dogs and tea-kettles become closely associated in the mind of a boy,
even if the boy himself be of excellent birth and breeding, and quite
tender-hearted beside, the juvenile traditions of many generations
have generally the effect of causing the dog and the kettle to enter
into an entangling alliance which the animal regards with accumulative
aversion, and about which the tea-kettle, whose expressions are
ordinarily so cheery, indulges in much unrythmical noise. Into such a
combination were Farmer Parkins' yellow dog Sam and an old kettle
forced very soon after Jack first beheld them both, and as yellow Sam
hurried down street in an honest attempt to rid himself of his
superfluous tin-ware, and as Jack followed him to note the results,
with a view to the more accurate affixing of tin kettles to the tails
of the dogs of the future, yellow Sam dropped exhausted in front of
his master's horses, and the dog's master came out of a store near by,
just as Jack, with a fragment of barrel-hoop, was trying to stimulate
the animal to renewed exertion. It was then that the farmer remarked,
with admirable vigor,
"You're the worst boy in town!"
Jack had heard this very expression so many times before that he was
half inclined to believe it true, yet how it could be a fact was a
something that bothered him greatly. He laughed when Farmer Parkins
said it, and he replied also, by several facial contortions, which
were as irritating as they were hideous; he stuck his hands into his
pockets, and bravely tried an ingratiating smile or two upon such
passers by as had overheard the farmer's remark, but as soon as he had
reached an alley down which to disappear, Jack suddenly became a very
chop-fallen, unhappy looking boy, and he murmured to himself,
"That's what everyone says. I don't see why. I don't swear, like Jimmy
Myers, nor steal, like Frank Balder, I don't tell lies—except when I
have to, and I go to Sunday-school every Sunday, while there are lots
of boys in town who spend the whole of that day in fishing. I didn't
mean to hurt old Parkin's yellow dog; I only wanted to see what he'd
do. And just didn't he travel?—oh, oh! But I don't see why I'm the
worst boy in town. I declare. If it isn't just the morning to go
fishing—warm, cloudy, worms easy to get. I wish't was Saturday, so
there wouldn't be any school, and I wish school teachers knew what fun
it is to go fishing; then they'd be easier on a fellow who played
hookey, and they'd ask him where he caught them, and how many, and how
big they were, instead of picking up their everlasting switches and
making themselves disagreeable. Perch would bite splendidly to-day,
and there are people in this town who'd be glad to have a good mess of
perch. I declare! I've just the idea; school or no school, whipping or
no whipping, it ought to be done. I'll go right away and see if Matt
can't go with me."
Jack moved rapidly through streets which crossed the main thoroughfare
of the town; then he approached a wood-pile where a boy of about his
own age was at work; before this boy's eyes Jack dangled two new
fish-lines and some hooks, and exclaimed—
"Come along, Matt!"
"I can't," said Matt, gazing hungrily at the new fishing tackle, "the
governor wouldn't like it at all."
"Oh, never mind the governor," said Jack, "I'll explain things to him
when we get back."
Matt seemed to be in some doubt as to whether the influence of his
tempter with the governor amounted to much, for the functionary
alluded to was master Matt Bolton's own father, a gentleman who held
quite firmly to the general opinion about Jack. Besides, Matt was
vigorously attacking the family wood-pile, his honest heart alive with
a sense of the need there was for him to do all in his power to
relieve his overworked father, and alive, too, with the conviction
that he would have to work industriously if he would chop and split a
day's supply before school-time. Besides, a fishing excursion implied
truancy, which, in turn, implied the certainty of a whipping in school
and the probability of punishment at home.
"Father would be very angry," said Matt, as he sighingly withdrew his
eyes from the new fishing tackle, "and he has already enough to bother
him, without having things made worse by me."
"But Matt, he won't feel bad when he knows what you did with the fish.
We'll give them to widow Batty. (This resolution of Jack's was newer
even than his tackle, for he had formed it while he talked). "She's
been sick, you know, and I heard your father say the other day that
she must have a hard enough time, at best, to feed that large family
of her's."
"But suppose we don't catch any?" suggested Matt.
"Then you can tell him what we meant to have done if we had caught
some. Besides, we can't help catching a lot at such a splendid
fish-hole as the mill-dam. I think it's awful that a whole family
should go hungry just because it hasn't got any father. Didn't your
governor ever read you out of the Bible of visiting the fatherless and
widows in their affliction?—mine has."
Boys are no more likely than adults to resist Satan when he appears as
an angel of light, so Matt speedily agreed to go as soon as he had
prepared a day's supply of firewood.
"Got another axe, and I'll help you," said Jack, and within five
minutes those two boys were making chips fly at a rate which would
have been the wonder of a hired wood-chopper, while Matt's mother, who
happened to glance through a window wondered why Jack's father could
accuse that boy of laziness. Then both boys carried the wood to the
kitchen door, unearthed some worms between sundry logs at the
wood-pile, and disappeared as stealthily as if in their benevolent
project they were animated by the scriptural injunction, to not let
the left hand know what the right hand was doing.
Reaching the brow of a little hill upon which the village was
situated, Jack exclaimed—
"I vow, if the river hasn't overflowed its banks."
"Umph," replied Matt, "I knew that a week ago."
"Well," said Jack, "so did I, but I forgot it. We can get to the dam
easily enough, though; it's only half a mile across the lowlands to
the river, and there are fences all the way. Riding rail fences is
bully fun. Wait till I get my rod; I've got two and I'll lend you
one."
Jack extracted two bamboo rods from the blackberry thicket where he
habitually kept them, lest they should occasion unpleasant questions,
as they certainly would have done had his frequent expeditions with
them begun at the house of his excellent father. Then both boys
mounted the fence, which was of rails, and their trip to the dam was
fairly begun.
Now to travel by fence-rail is a delightful method of passing time, as
all liberally educated boys know, if one is bound for no where in
particular, but when one is two, and both are boys, and are in quest
of fish, and the middle of the day is approaching, in which fish do
not bite, half a mile of rail fencing is a trip which consumes
patience with great rapidity. Had the adventurers been other than
boys, they would have turned back at once, but when a boy gets a
project clearly into his head he never gives any one an excuse to say
that the mule is the most obstinate of all living animals. Jack soon
grew impatient of his slow progress, and conceived a brilliant idea.
Raising himself to his feet on a rail of reasonable flatness (for a
fence rail) he steadied himself with his rod, and accomplished with
safety and celerity the trip to the angle where the rail terminated.
"Hurrah, Matt!" he shouted, "look here!" and he walked along another
rail.
Matt saw and was glad, and following Jack's example, he made some
excellent time himself.
"We'd never have learned that trick if it hadn't been for the
overflow. How glad I am that I came, and—Ow!" Jack's abrupt
termination was due to his own course having temporarily terminated,
for the third rail upon which he ventured, not having been designed
for the particular object which Jack had in view, had been split
triangularly, and one of Jack's shoes had slipped to one side, the
other slipping in an opposite direction, and the young man came down
astride the unyielding oak with a thud whose sound was something
inaudible when considered in the light of the anguish which it caused.
No new word presented itself for use just then; Jack continued to
remark "Ow," with a variety of long-drawn inflections, while Matt
precipitately lowered himself to a position of safety, and manifested
no inclination to go farther. After some moments devoted strictly to
facial contortion, Jack succeeded in changing his position so that
both legs hung upon the same side of the fence, then he examined the
rail closely, as if to see if the tip of his spine had not driven a
hole through it, and remarked,
"We'd better do this in our stockinged feet."
Matt thought so too, so both boys removed their shoes, tying them
together with the strings upon which the fish were to be strung, and
slinging them across their shoulders. Their progress thereafter was
considerably more rapid, but a sudden shriek and a splash of
voluminous sound and displacement announced that Matt had fallen
entirely from his rail, and when Jack came to view the scene, Matt was
swelling the flood with his own tears.
"I declare," exclaimed Jack, "that's too bad, old fellow! And you had
the worms in your pocket, too—I hope the water hasn't got into the box
and drowned them so they can't wiggle when they're on the hooks. Say,
its warm; your clothes will dry on you, before we reach the dam. Oh,
I'll tell you what,—we'll take them off and wring them out, and go
swimming at the same time."
At the prospect of an unlooked for sport, Matt dried his tears, and a
broad flat rail having been found the boys disrobed and took whatever
comfort could be found in water eighteen inches deep with a field of
corn stubble at the bottom of it. Matt's clothes seemed rather clammy
as he again resumed his normal position inside them, but Jack
described so delightfully the assortment of fish which he wished to
catch, that damp clothing became a mere thing of the forgotten past.
Started again, Jack moved rapidly for some moments, but suddenly
stopped and shouted,
"Hurry up, Matt; here's the splendidest thing that ever was!"
Matt obeyed orders, and while yet twenty rail lengths behind he heard
Jack shout,
"Here's a bridge that floated away from one of the little brooks;
we'll just make a raft of it and reach the dam in less than no time."
Matt eyed the bridge with manifest favor; it was simply two logs,—mud
sills—connected by three cross-ties, upon which the planking was laid.
"Won't the current trouble us when we reach the river road?" he asked.
"We won't go that way," said Jack. "We'll go through the fields and
then along a wood road that goes through the timber. It's half a mile
the shorter way, besides being the safer. Come ahead; we'll use our
rods for poles to push the raft with."
"Then we've got to knock down fences," said Matt.
"Well," said Jack, who had a conscience in hiding somewhere about him,
"we'll come back in a few days, when the flood has gone down, and put
them up again. And we'll play the raft is a ram—a regular Merrimac,
you know,—and the fences are an enemy's fleet, or a chain stretched
across the river. Let's back out and get a good start."
The bridge, which did not draw a foot of water, was backed across the
road, one boy stood at each side, and at a signal from Jack it was
driven against the fence, through which it crashed most gloriously,
sprinkling a dozen fence-rails about the surface of the water.
"Hooray!" shouted Jack, "now for the next one! The Union forever!" and
then Jack, while _en route_ for the next fence, finding himself
unequal to the task of extemporizing a stirring address to his
command, began to quote from "Rolla's Address to the Peruvians," which
was considered the gem of that much used book, "The Comprehensive
School Speaker"—"My brave associates, partners of my toils, my
feelings and my fame, can Rolla's words add fresh vigor to the——"
Just then the raft struck the fence, but this latter being of the
"staked and ridered"[1] pattern, the result was that the raft came to
a sudden standstill, and the crew were thrown flat upon it, their
respective heads hanging somewhat astern and in danger of being
water-soaked.
Footnote 1:
A rail fence across the angles of which two rails meet in X shape,
their lowest ends driven into the grounds a little way and a rail
lying in the upper angle of the X.
"Blazes!" exclaimed Jack wrathfully, as he endeavored to staunch a
bleeding nose, "what did a man need to have a staked and ridered fence
just here for? Well, we'll have to push down a couple of stakes and
break our way through."
The commanding officer's plan was speedily acted upon, and the raft
went on swimmingly until it seemed to slide upon some obstruction,
then it came to a dead stop.
"Grounded on an old corn hill, I suppose," said Jack. "Well, 'starn
all,' as old Barnstable says in the Fourth Reader."
But no amount of pushing availed to move the raft, and the sudden
breaking of Jack's rod gave affairs a new and discouraging aspect.
"We can't both fish with one rod," said Jack, after descending into
and emerging from the depths of his mind. "I'll tell you what let's
do, we'll take off our clothes, make them into a bundle, and carry
them ashore on our heads, as explorers sometimes do when they ford
rivers."
"What!" asked Matt, "and not get any fish for poor Mrs. Batty and her
children?"
"That _is_ a pity," said Jack, with some signs of embarrassment, and
the gathering together of the loose and fleeting ends of previous
plans and resolutions. "But, you see, it must be nearly eleven
o'clock; we've used up an awful lot of time, and we've got to get
ashore yet, and be back home by the time school is out, else the
folks'll know we've been playing hookey. I wonder if we couldn't get
the poor old woman some blackberries? It's only June now, though, and
I never saw a ripe blackberry before the first of July. Perhaps
there's some early cherries in Milman's orchard."
With this slight salve for the consciences whose wounds had begun to
smart, the boys stripped once more, waded ashore through a corn-field
in which the hills of sharp cut stalks seemed omnipresent, dressed
themselves, and sneaked into the Milman orchard, where they made wry
faces while discussing the probable value to the widow Battay of the
few pale pink cherries they found. Dinner was reached and, eaten,
somehow with less appetites than was usual after a morning spent in
school, and then the boys, each by himself, made hasty search for
whatever suitable material might be soonest found to insert between
shirts and jackets, to break the force of what, in the memory of many
old fellows who once were school-boys, was the inevitable penalty of
truancy.
------------------------------------------------------------------------