INJURY AND RESTITUTION.
Dr. Wittingham, whose only son Jack was, sat in his office one morning
compounding a complicated and consequently a favorite prescription of
his own, and at the same time pondering upon the equally complicated
character of his boy. The doctor had been a boy himself, a third of a
century before, and an extremely lively one, if the traditions of his
native village had been correctly handed down, but a man's memory is
not in the habit of going backward half a lifetime, unless in search
of old sweethearts, so the doctor owned to himself that Jack was
without exception the most mischievous boy he had ever known or heard
of.
"It passes all explanation, too," said the doctor, sitting down and
watching his prescription as it filtered slowly into a glass beneath
it. "I'm a man of good behavior if ever there was one, his mother was
a lady born and bred, he knows the Bible better than our minister
does, and there's nothing good but what the boy seems to take a lively
interest in. I was going to write a book upon heredity, basing it upon
the development of that boy's character as inherited from his parents
and modified by such teachings as I have imparted, to improve the
original stock. But bless me! I'm sometimes unable to find the
original stock at all, and as for the improvements I intend to make in
it, well, they're as invisible as the ailments of some of my rich
patients. Whatever I say to him seems to filter through him more
rapidly than that mixture is doing through the paper, and leaves not
even a sediment behind, while whatever he shouldn't hear seems to
stick to him like an adhesive plaster. Before he goes to school, he
recites his lessons to me in the most perfect manner; when he comes
home he brings a written complaint from the teacher, who has found him
outrageously mischievous all day long; and when his mother takes any
of his torn jackets and trowsers in hand, she is certain to find two
or three more documents of the same kind which Jack has kindly
forgotten to deliver, perhaps out of regard for my feelings. He will
chop wood all day Saturday for the Widow Batty or some other needy
person, until I determine he's growing to be too good to live; then my
own dinner comes up underdone because he hasn't considered that
wood-chopping, like charity, should begin at home. I've heard no
complaints of him for nearly a week; there must be a terrible shower
of them brewing somewhere."
There was a knock at the door, and the town supervisor of roads
entered.
"Ah, good morning," said the doctor, briskly. "Who's under the weather
now?"
"Wa'al," drawled the supervisor, "nobody, I reckon 'less its you.
Here's a little bill I'm sorry to have to bring to you, but its had to
be done."
The doctor took the paper from the Supervisor's hand and read as
follows:
"Dr. Andrew Wittingham to town of Doveton, Dr. One-half cost of
replacing Second Brook Bridge, $11.62."
"What on earth does this mean?" exclaimed the doctor after reading the
bill several times.
"Bolton has paid the other half," said the supervisor; "its for that
bridge that Jack and Matt hooked, you know, and left in the middle of
Prewitt's corn field half a mile from where it belonged."
"Hooked a bridge?" exclaimed the doctor, "I don't understand. Jack
never said anything to me about it."
"Didn't he?" asked the supervisor with an ironical grin. "Wa'al, like
enough he didn't; 'twas during the June freshet, you know, an' the
boys found it loose, an' went raftin' around on it. Like enough they'd
have fetched it back, but they rammed it through one fence after
another, an' at last they got it aground. We tried to get it under a
log wagon an' haul it back, but 'twas no go, an' we havn't put the
hire of the wagon into the bill, for the man wasn't to charge anything
if he didn't get it through. Shouldn't wonder, though, if Prewitt
brought in a bill for damages, he says it'll do him out of twenty
hills of corn, besides being a nuisance to plough around. An' he and
the next man are out about a dozen fence rails each."
The doctor recognized the inevitable, yet remarked that the price
seemed a large one for a bridge in a country where lumber was so
cheap.
"Just what it cost," remarked the supervisor, "the whole thing came to
$23.25, an' in dividin' I threw the odd cent on to Bolton, for I think
the medical profession ought to be encouraged."
The doctor paid the bill, and bade his visitor a rather curt good
morning. Then he went to the door and shouted "Jack!" in tones which
would have been heard by the young man if he had been at school, which
he was not.
"Jack," said the doctor, sternly, when the youth appeared, "I've just
had to pay for a bridge which you stole in June."
"I didn't," promptly answered the boy.
"It amounted to the same thing, in dollars and cents, as stealing,"
said the doctor. "How many hours of fun did you have that day?"
Jack thought profoundly for a minute or two, and replied, meekly,
"About two, I suppose."
"And to pay for those I have had to lose the receipts of about a day
of hard, disgusting work. Do you consider that the fair thing, for one
who is doing everything he can for your good?"
"No, sir," replied Jack, honestly contrite in the presence of this new
view of the case.
"Then why did you do it?"
"Because."
"Because what?"
"Because."
"Because you're an ungrateful scamp, and don't care for anything but
your own pleasure."
"Yes I do, father," said Jack, beginning to cry, "I"——
"Don't make excuses, sir," interrupted the doctor; "you shall do extra
work, at whatever a laborer would be paid, to make up the cost of that
bridge, and do it on your holidays and Saturdays, too. Now I want you
to go and burn that old bridge, or I'll have to pay for the annoyance
it will give Prewitt."
Jack lingered for a moment, as bad boys often do on such occasions,
longing to say something which he could not put into words, and to
hear some recognition of what he felt was good within him. Had the
doctor used a mere tithe of the patience and love that Heaven had been
compelled to display in reforming him, he might have attached Jack to
him by that love which is the best of all educators in things wise and
thoughtful. But the doctor, like the boy, lived first, though
unconsciously, for himself, and so with an impatient gesture he drove
Jack from the door. The boy filled a pocket with matches and lounged
off, muttering to himself,
"It'll be bully fun to burn the old bridge, anyhow, I shouldn't wonder
if it would take a couple of days, and there'll be that much school
time gone, but I say—Matt ought to be made to help—oh, wouldn't that
be jolly! I'll go ask his father right away—everybody calls him an
honest man, and he oughtn't to see me paying Matt's debts."
Jack hurried at once to Mr. Bolton's store; as he entered, the
proprietor, who was alone, picked up a hoe-handle, and exclaimed—
"You young scoundrel, I've a good mind to break every bone in your
rascally body. Don't you ever dare to coax my boy to go anywhere with
you again, or I'll half kill you. You're the worst boy in town."
Rightly assuming that the opportunity for presenting his request was
not a promising one, Jack departed at once, and hung about the
schoolhouse until the mid-morning intermission; then he seized Matt
and announced the situation, taking care to omit mention of his
interview with Bolton senior. Matt at once volunteered assistance, and
an hour later the boys had burning upon the bridge a glorious fire of
dead boughs and broken rails. When the boards had burned in two, the
boys pried the two logs toward each other, and thereafter they
adjusted the logs several times, getting each time some smut upon
their clothes as well as occasional burns upon their hands. When at
length the logs seemed able to take care of themselves the boys
strewed some green twigs upon the ground to lie on, and as they were
stretched upon them, chatting in the desultory manner peculiar to
every one who lies down about a fire, Jack remarked,
"Say Matt, do you know that people in this world are awfully unfair to
boys?"
"I guess I do," replied Matt, "but what made you think of it just
now?"
"Why, my govenor gave me fits this morning about this bridge, and
called me ungrateful and all sorts of things. I s'pose he thought he
told the truth, but I know better. I'd do anything for him—I'd die for
him. Why, one day that big mulatto Ijam, that he can never collect his
bills of, came in looking awful ugly, and blazing about being sued,
and I was sure he meant to hurt father; I just got a hatchet and stood
outside the door, ready to rush in and tomahawk him if he did the
least thing. It made me late at school, and I got licked for that, but
I didn't care, and the teacher wrote a note home about it and I got
scolded, but I didn't tell what I'd done."
"My father's the same way, sometimes," said Matt.
"I know he is," said Jack, hastily debating (with decision in the
negative) whether he should tell of his own morning experience with
Mr. Bolton.
"Now," continued Jack, "I've got to work all my holidays at something,
I don't know what, until I earn enough money to pay my share of that
bridge—you know the two govenors have had to settle for a new one?"
"Mercy, no!" exclaimed Matt.
"They have, this morning," said Jack. "I shouldn't wonder if you'd
catch it when you go home, but there's some bully mullein leaves under
the hill that you can put inside the back of your jacket."
Matt devoted some moments of disagreeable reflection to this topic;
then his sense of companionship came to the surface, and he said—
"I'll help you, Jack—unless father punishes me in the same way. What
do you suppose you'll have to do?"
"I don't know yet," said Jack, "but I've got a splendid idea. The
govenor has just bought his winter's supply of wood, as he generally
does in June, and he always has it cut while its green because it
costs only a dollar and a quarter a cord, while the men charge a
dollar and a half when its seasoned. I'll ask him to let me work it
out in that way."
"Why, Jack," remonstrated Matt, "it will take you more than half a
year of holidays."
"No, it won't," said Jack, "I can chop nearly a cord a day when I work
hard. Besides, I've got an idea worth more than my own industry. I'm
going to blow at school, and around among the boys, about what a
splendid wood-chopper I am."
"I'll say the same thing about you," said Matt.
"All right; we'll both talk of my particular swing with the axe until
the whole crowd will be mad enough to take the conceit out of me at
any price. Then I'll offer a bet of something worth having—a half
dollar against half a dime, say—that I can chop and split more in a
single day than any other boy in town. Lots of them will take up the
bet, we'll appoint a day, the place to be our wood, pile, and every
boy to bring his own axe. You shall be umpire, so you won't have to do
anything but walk about and egg the others up to business."
This brilliant device took complete possession of Matt, and as for
Jack, within a week there was not a boy in town who could pass him
without making a face at him, and scarcely a mother dependant upon her
own boys for fuel but had an abundant supply without having to beg for
it. Many indignant boys offered indefinite bets in favor of their own
skill with the axe, but the sagacious Jack declined them all on the
ground that he could not honorably bet on what he called a sure thing.
When finally he offered his own wager, it was accepted by acclamation
by nearly the whole of his own arithmetic class, numbering
twenty-nine. The boys from the other school hoped they were not to be
excluded just because they lived in a different part of the town, and
Matt went on a special mission to them to assure them that this was to
be, figuratively speaking, an international contest, in which all
territorial lines were to be as if they existed not. Some other boys
who never went to school, hardened young rowdies, who, as a rule did
nothing, and accumulated a large stock of vitality which was not
always expended in proper ways, heard of the approaching match, swore
by all sorts of persons, places and things that they only wished they
might "take a whack at that game," and were cordially invited to
participate. Then the would-be contestants met in convention, and Jack
formally deposited his half dollar in the hands of Matt, who was to be
stake-holder. There being some difficulty in deciding how the bets
against Jack were to be held, the challenger magnanimously declined to
accept any bet, if the crowd would agree, each for himself, that the
man who cut least, and he alone, should be loser of a half dime in
case of Jack's triumph.
After a fair canvass of conflicting interests as to date, which
involved the withdrawal of several boys who had agreed to go fishing
or shooting, or berrying, or visiting, it was decided that the ensuing
Saturday morning would be the most available time, particularly as
Jack explained that his father who, he was sure, would stop the whole
thing if he heard of it in advance, would start before daylight that
morning to attend a consultation miles away by rail. The idea that the
proceeding would be displeasing to any adult silenced at once the
objections of all who had preferred another date, and it even brought
back the boys who had pleaded prior engagements.
As for Dr. Wittingham, he was completely astounded and wonderfully
pleased when Jack, with a frank business-like air, proposed to cut the
ten cords of winter wood as an offset to the bridge bill of eleven
dollars and sixty-two cents. The doctor patted Jack's head, called him
a noble fellow, gave him a stick of licorice, and promised him a
dollar for himself on the completion of the work.
"Now," said the doctor, when Jack had left his presence, "I think I've
a good hard point for that work on heredity; Impose a rational penalty
for offense, and its manifest justice will improve both the reasoning
and moral nature of the offender."
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