"When the devil was sick
The devil a saint would be."
The only consolation that Master Jack could conjure up, as he carried
his broken arm home, was that his father would undoubtedly consider
the disaster a sufficient punishment for the offense. Jack could not
at first imagine why his arm should indulge in such sudden and
terrible twinges and object so nervously to being rubbed or held. The
pain which it experienced from the shaking consequent upon running
caused Jack to subside into a walk as soon as he had assured himself
that he was not followed; even then the pain gave no indication of
subsiding. Suddenly the truth dawned upon the boy's mind, and between
the shock occasioned by the discovery and the sense of at least a
month of vacation to be utterly lost, Jack became so weak and faint
that when he at last reached home he dropped upon the office step and
his head fell heavily against the door. The doctor, who fortunately
was at home, opened hastily and exclaimed,
"Well, what's the latest?"
"Oh, father," gasped Jack, "I've tumbled, and I'm afraid my arm is
broken."
The doctor helped the boy into a chair, eliciting a howl as he did so.
A short examination of the arm caused additional howling, and during
the quarter hour consumed by the operation of setting, Jack abandoned
all preconceived ideas of the nature of fun. Finally, when the doctor
carefully removed his clothing, put him into bed, and told him he
would have to lie there for at least a fortnight, Jack dragged the
pillow up to his face with his unhurt arm, and moistened it most
uncomfortably with tears. Half an hour later, when his father had
broken the news to his mother, who had nerves, and the lady came up to
see him, she found him sobbing violently.
"Jack, Jack," she exclaimed, "this will never do. There is always a
fever with arms broken above the elbow, and if you excite yourself it
will come on too soon, and it may destroy your reason."
"I wish it would," sobbed Jack, "I'd a great deal rather be crazy than
lie here in my senses all through this jolly, awful month. I can't
pick a blackberry, and I can't have any money for Christmas, and I
know Frank Parker guesses one of the new baits I was going to try on
the perch, and it'll be just like him to go and catch every one of
them. It's just horrid."
"Jack!" remonstrated Mrs. Wittingham, "can't you think how horrid it
is for you to go and break your arm, and make more work for every body
in the house?"
"Yes," said Jack, "but you don't think that makes me feel any better,
do you?"
"Then," said Mrs. Wittingham, "you should take your suffering as a
judgment from the Lord."
"He might have put it off until after vacation, anyhow," exclaimed the
bad boy, at which Mrs. Wittingham clapped her fingers to her ears and
fled, and informed her husband in almost the same breath, that the
dreadful boy deserved a sound whipping even now, and that nothing but
the grace of God could ever make Jack what he should be.
But after Jack had recovered from his rage, and had been surprised
into taking a short nap, he began to view the situation in about the
light which his mother would have liked him to use. It certainly had
been great fun to tease that French teacher—the thought of it provoked
even now a merry chuckle which a twinge of the arm suddenly
discouraged—but it was equally certain that the teacher himself did
not seem to enjoy it. As for sliding down a bell rope, no boy had ever
done it before, to Jack's knowledge, but oh, how his hands were
smarting! The more he thought of them the worse they burned; he must
have something cooling put upon them, even if he had to confess how he
came by them. Some one would be sure to tell his father of his
exploits at the schoolhouse, so why shouldn't he confess in advance
and get the credit for it?
May be the broken arm was a judgment upon him, as his mother
suggested. Well, he would admit that he deserved it, though he still
doubted the necessity for its infliction at this particular season of
the year. He would do his best to learn by it, anyhow—he certainly was
going to have time enough in which he could do nothing else. So Jack
confessed, and had his hands treated to a cooling lotion. The doctor,
having previously heard the story from the vivacious tongue of the
outraged exile himself, and having spent a delightful hour, partly
retrospective, in laughing over the latest capers of his son, was in a
position to listen with judicial gravity and to express his horror at
frequent intervals and in fitting terms. Then Jack listened to a long
and solemn lecture which was more wordy than pithy, and was told that
he must avoid even exciting subjects of thought for a fortnight to
come.
"Mayn't Matt come to see me?" asked Jack in faltering tones.
"Only for two or three minutes at a time," said the doctor; "even
conversation will excite you."
"I want to talk to him," said Jack.
"Why can't you talk to your mother and me?" asked the doctor.
It is beyond all things astonishing what silly questions may be asked
by sensible men when they have forgotten their own boyhood days, and
it is not surprising that Jack could not easily frame an answer to the
doctor's question.
"Did Matt ever feed or clothe you?" asked the doctor.
Jack admitted, with some trifling modifications of the first
condition, that Matt had not.
"Did he ever give you a home, or take care of you when you were sick,
or pay your school bills?"
Jack shook his head.
"Then why can't you care so much for your mother and me as you do for
him?" continued the doctor.
Jack was silent.
"It's because you're an ungrateful young scamp," exclaimed the doctor
with considerable temper, as he arose and left the room.
"Father," shouted Jack, "it isn't! Please come back?"
The doctor, considerably startled by such an exhibition of feeling,
hastily returned.
"Father," said Jack, turning his head in spite of considerable pain
which the motion inflicted upon his arm, "it's because—because Matt's
a boy."
"Umph!" exclaimed the doctor, "that is a reason—a wonderful reason. I
should think you would want to have it patented, or copyrighted, or
something."
The doctor retired, pondering upon human depravity as exemplified by
ingratitude, and Jack, having plenty of time, began to devise some way
of shaming his father out of so unjust an idea as that his boy was
ungrateful. When he became a man and a steamboat captain he would
bring all the doctor's medicines free of charge—perhaps that wouldn't
heap coals of fire upon the old gentleman's head—oh, no! Indeed, he
was not sure but he might one day become a missionary—missionaries
must have jolly times on tropical islands where they can always go
about in their shirt sleeves, have for nothing all the bananas they
can eat, and shoot lions, and birds of paradise, and things, right
from their own doors. Perhaps when he sent his father a tiger-skin
rug, and his mother a whole lot of ostrich plumes, and a monkey, and
some cunning heathen gods to put on her parlor mantel, his father
would talk about ingratitude then, but Jack rather guessed not! Then
when his mother came in with a plate of water-toast, Jack surprised
her by remarking.
"Mother, when marble time comes, I'll give you all the buttons I win."
"What do you mean, Jack?" said the lady.
"Why, we play marbles for buttons sometimes, and there's only two or
three boys in town that can beat me, and I never play with them."
"Where do they get the buttons to bet?" asked Mrs. Wittingham, "and,"
she continued, a dire suspicion coming suddenly to mind, "where do
_you_ get them?"
"I—I don't know," said Jack feebly, at which answer his mother sniffed
alarmingly, and left Jack to feel that grown folks were most
shamefully suspicious, and that they couldn't appreciate gratitude
when it was offered them.
Two or three days later the fever set in, and Jack dreamed for days of
Polar explorations, where he could go swimming in cooling seas and sun
himself dry on iridescent icebergs. He planned a wonderful voyage of
discovery to the North Pole, and it was of inestimable comfort to him
to report progress to Matt, in the five minutes which that youth was
allowed daily at the sufferer's bedside. The tenor of his thoughts was
daily interrupted by his mother, who considered the occasion demanded
Bible reading instead of personal sympathy for the youth, who could
not leave his bed to attend family prayers, and she so frequently
selected passages descriptive of a locality the temperature of which
is the reverse of polar, that Jack had to do a great deal of mental
rambling to get his thoughts in proper trim again.
At last the fever subsided leaving Jack extremely weak in body, but of
a temper simply angelic. He prefaced every request with "please," he
never forgot to say "thank you," and he sang little hymns softly to
himself. Mrs. Wittingham was delighted beyond measure, and when she
suggested that the minister might like to call, and Jack replied that
it would be very nice to have a chat with that gentleman, the lady
became considerably alarmed on the subject of the boy's recovery. Mr.
Daybright, the minister, was really a very pleasant man, as Jack
discovered, now that he had time to "take his measure," as he himself
expressed it, and after Mr. Daybright had talked with him for half an
hour, and prayed with him, and departed, Jack did not know but he
might finally conclude to be a minister himself, and have cake and
cider offered him in the middle of the afternoon when he called upon
boys with broken arms.
Then Jack's Sunday-school teacher called, and suggested that the class
should come in a body, on the following Sunday, and Jack accepted the
suggestion with fervor, and the class came, and stood decorously in a
row, and sang several hymns, and looked as sober as if fish-lines and
peg-tops and balls and birds' nests and orchards and crooked pins and
truancy did not exist anywhere nearer than the planet Neptune. Then
the teacher gave Jack a book from the Sunday-school library, which
book he had selected with Jack's particular condition of mind in view,
and although it proved to be the story of a dreadfully priggish but
very pious little London footman, whose nature, tastes, temptations
and general environment were utterly unlike Jack's, the boy labored
manfully through it, and endeavored to persuade himself that he
enjoyed it.
In fact, so thorough an overhauling did Jack's conscience receive that
he even felt himself called upon to confess to the doctor his affair
with Hoccamine's whiskey, but although the doctor had heard the story
a month before from the lips of Matt's father, he had not yet reached
that mental balance which would enable him to reprove the boy and
still leave him impressed with a sense of the vileness of the rum
traffic, so the doctor said only "Well," in a very grave way, and made
an excuse to leave the sick chamber.
A few days later Jack was allowed to sit under the great trees in
front of the house, and as he was positively forbidden to leave the
grounds, to run, or to make any exertion which might disturb the arm,
which he carried in a sling, he fell to noting the habits of birds
with their young, until he became so affected that he silently vowed
never to rob a nest again. He found in the flowers and the shrubbery
many a charm which he had never suspected when weeding them; he
contemplated cloud pictures until an overwhelming sense of the
beautiful compelled him to decide upon an artistic career, and he
watched every motion of whatever laborer happened to be in sight until
he determined that he never again would throw a chip or anything else
at a laboring man, no matter how funny he might look or how fluently
he could swear when he espied his tormentor.
Finally, to the delight of his parents and many other people who were
responsible for boys, but to the general depression of the boys
themselves, it became known that Jack had signified his intention of
joining the church. Mr. Daybright admitted that in years Jack was
rather young to take such a step, but, on the other hand, he had a far
abler mind, and—even although he was called the worst boy in town—a
cleaner record than half the adults who came into the fold. Mr.
Daybright had explained to him, as men often will to boys other than
their own, that boys need not stop being boys and being happy just
because they become good, so there was considerable disappointment
experienced by such youths as shrewdly imagined that Jack's change of
heart would result in his large and varied assortment of knives,
lines, marbles, skates, etc., being thrown upon the market at reduced
prices. Jack explained, with considerable vigor, that because he was
going to give up mischief it did not necessarily follow that he should
become a muff, or a soft head, or a twiddler, or an apron string, or a
foo-foo, or a stick-in-the-mud, or a dummy, or any other of a dozen or
two unpopular varieties of boy which he mentioned, but that he
proposed to "keep his shirt on," remain "forked end down," retain
possession of his eye-teeth, and have as good a time as anybody else
could who didn't have to suffer for it afterward. And the unregenerate
boys went away slowly and without the great possessions which they had
expected to carry with them, while one of them who was generous as
well as shrewd was heard to say that bully old Jack Wittingham wasn't
going to flunk out after all, and that a fellow could do many a worse
thing than to join the church.
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