A little Boy having stolen a book from one of his school-fellows,
took it to his Mother, who, instead of correcting him, praised his
sharpness, and rewarded him. In process of time, as he grew bigger,
he increased also in villainy, till at length he was taken up for
committing a great robbery, and was brought to justice and condemned
for it. As the officers were conducting him to the gallows, he was
attended by a vast crowd, and among the rest his Mother came sobbing
along, and deploring her son’s unhappy fate; which the criminal
observing, he begged leave to speak to her: this being granted, he put
his mouth to her ear, as if he was going to whisper something, and
bit it off! The officer, shocked at this behaviour, asked him if the
crimes he had committed were not sufficient to glut his wickedness,
without being also guilty of such an unnatural violence towards his
mother? Let no one wonder, said he, that I have done this to her, for
she deserves even worse at my hands. For if she had chastised instead
of praising and encouraging me, when I stole my school-fellow’s book, I
should not now have been brought to this ignominious and untimely end.