INALIENABLE RIGHTS.
As time went on, from that Fourth of July when Johnny had reason to
change his views about independence, and as he thought more about that,
and other matters connected with it, he grew only the more firmly
convinced that any of his rights which trod upon the toes of other
people’s rights, were only wrongs under a false name.
The boys at his school nearly all liked him; he “went into things” so
heartily, that he was wanted on both sides in all the games that had more
than one. But with all his love of fun, the boys soon found that there
were some sorts of fun—or what they called so—for which it was useless
to ask his help. So when recess came, the morning before school closed
for the summer, a group of boys gathered in a corner of the playground,
whispering together, and did not ask him to join them. He felt a little
left out in the cold, for some of his best friends were in the group, but
he was not naturally suspicious, and his mother had brought him up in a
wholesome fear of imagining himself injured or slighted.
“Always take good-will for granted, Johnny,” she said to him once, when
he fancied himself neglected by somebody, “at least until you have the
most positive proof of ill-will.”
[Illustration]
So he joined some of the smaller boys, who did not seem to have been
invited to the conference, and made them supremely happy by getting up a
game of football.
He had just parted from one of the larger boys, on his way home from
school that afternoon, and was near his gate, when a little fellow, the
youngest of all his schoolmates, stuck his head cautiously out of the
nearly closed gate, and, after seeing that the coast was clear, said in a
mysterious whisper,—
“Hold on, Johnny, will you? I’ve got something to tell you, but if you
ever say I told you, you’ll get me into the awfullest scrape that ever
was!”
If little Jamie Hughes had been talking to anybody but Johnny, he would
have exacted a very solemn “indeed and double deed and upon my sacred
honor I’ll never tell!”
But the boys all felt very sure, by this time, that Johnny would not do
them an ill-turn, no matter what chance he might have; so Jamie went
hurriedly on, linking his arm in Johnny’s as he spoke, and drawing him
inside the gate and up the walk, as if he feared being seen.
“You see, they didn’t mean me to hear,” said Jamie, talking very fast,
“but it wasn’t my fault. I was up the apple tree cutting my name, and
two of them were under it, and one of them said, ‘The old gentleman will
open his eyes, for once in his life,’ and then the other said, kind of
uneasy, ‘I don’t think we need take _cannon_ crackers; wouldn’t the small
ones do just as well?’ and then I began to sing, and they never let on
they heard me, but the first fellow said: ‘My dear boy, my grandfather
expressly requested that the salute in his honor should be fired with
cannon-crackers!’ and then they both burst out laughing, and walked away,
and I never thought, till ever so long afterward, that that one who spoke
last hadn’t a grandfather to his name, and I’m sure they’re going to do
something to—to Mr. Foster.”
“What makes you think that, Jamie?” asked Johnny, kindly, “It may be all
a joke; perhaps they saw you up there, and are just putting up a game on
you.”
Jamie shook his head.
“No, they’re not!” he said, very positively, “they both jumped like
everything when I began to sing, and the one who said little crackers
would do turned as red as a beet. Now, Johnny, I came to you because I
knew you wouldn’t give me away, and because I thought you could think of
some way to checkmate them, and you’d just better believe it’s what I
think! You know Mr. Foster always leaves his window wide open at night,
and the ceilings are so low in that house where he boards that anybody
could throw a pack of crackers into a second-story window easy enough.
I was in his room once, and his bed’s right opposite the window, and
suppose those fellows should throw so hard that the crackers would hit
him in the face, or light in the bed and set the clothes afire? I can’t
tell you all I know, or you’d believe me, and spot the fellows in a
minute, and then _they’d_ spot _me_, and I wouldn’t give much for my skin
if they did!”
[Illustration]
Jamie would have been a good deal more nervous than he was if he had
known that Johnny had already, and without the least difficulty,
“spotted the fellows.” Jamie was a timid little boy, and his affection
for Mr. Foster, who was the teacher of mathematics at the school, had
grown out of that gentleman’s patient kindness to him. Mr. Foster never
mistook timidity for stupidity, but he was a very clear-headed man,
with little patience for boys who tried to make shifts and tricks do
duty for honestly-learned lessons. So the school was divided into two
pretty equal camps concerning him. The boys who really studied hard were
his enthusiastic admirers, and those who studied only enough to “pull
through,” as they expressed it, were very much the reverse. But when it
came to a question of “fun,” things were sometimes a little mixed, and it
seemed, in this particular case, as if some of the boys had thoughtlessly
gone over to the enemy, and then been somewhat dismayed when they saw
where they were being led.
Johnny was very much troubled by what he had heard, and the more he
thought of it the less he liked it. A pack of cannon-crackers, flung
at random through a window, and flung all the harder by reason of the
flinger’s haste to put himself out of sight, might do untold mischief.
Beside the possibility that they would start a fire in the room, there
was another even worse one—they might explode dangerously near the face
of the sleeping victim.
No, the thing must be stopped; but how to stop it? He thought of asking
the boys, point-blank, what they were whispering about, but, even should
any of them give him a truthful answer, they would probably suspect
that somebody had suggested the question to him, and then, of course,
remember Jamie’s presence in the tree. He thought of giving Mr. Foster
a confidential warning, but, if it took effect, it would be open to the
same objection, and he did not like to think of the life Jamie would lead
for the next few months were he even suspected of being the informer.
Johnny’s face wore so puzzled and hopeless an expression, that evening
after he had learned his lessons, that his father said, kindly,—
“There’s nothing so desperate that it can’t be helped somehow, my boy;
what’s the special desperation this evening? Grief at the prospect of a
temporary separation from your beloved studies?”
Johnny laughed a little at that.
“Oh, no, papa!” he said. “I like one or two of them well enough, but I
think I can stand it without them for a while. I wish I could tell you
all about what’s the matter, but I haven’t any right to. I will ask you
a question, though. Can you think of any kind of game, or spree, or
anything that would make the fellows at school take such an early start
on the Fourth that they wouldn’t have time for anything else first?”
Mr. Leslie had not in the least forgotten how he had felt and acted when
he was a boy, and he also remembered various things which Johnny had said
from time to time about the way in which Mr. Foster was regarded by the
boys, so he had no great difficulty in guessing that some mischief was
on foot which Johnny was anxious to forestall, but could not hinder by
attacking the enemy on high moral grounds.
“I should not be much of an editor if I had not enough invention and to
spare for such an emergency as that,” said Mr. Leslie, smiling; “How many
fellows are there, altogether?”
Johnny thought a minute, and then said,—
“Only thirty, papa, since the mumps broke loose—we had over forty before
that.”
“I’ll call around to-morrow, just before the exercises are over,” said
Mr. Leslie, “and ask permission to address the meeting. By a curious
coincidence, a plan for jollifying the Fourth was seething in my brain
before you spoke, and I think a trifling alteration will make it fit the
case to a nicety.”
Johnny fell upon his father’s neck with smothering affection, and went to
bed with a light and easy heart; if “papa” undertook the business, all
would go right.
“And he didn’t ask me a single question, except about how many of us
there were!” said Johnny to himself, proudly, “What a first-class boy he
must have been himself!”
Mr. Leslie was on very good terms with the principal of Johnny’s school,
and had no difficulty in obtaining leave to “address the meeting.” His
address was an invitation to attend an all-day picnic, on the Fourth of
July, and included teachers as well as scholars. Two hay-wagons, half
filled with hay, were to be the vehicles, and a brass band was to be in
attendance. The refreshments, Mr. Leslie stated, would be simple, but
abundant, nobody need feel called upon to bring anything, but anybody who
chose to bring fruit, and could bring it from home, would have the thanks
of the community.
[Illustration]
“It is not usual,” concluded Mr. Leslie, “to impose conditions in giving
an invitation, but I must ask a promise from all of you, as we are to
start at seven, sharp, on our collecting tour, not to leave your homes
that morning until you are called for. We shall have a long drive to
take, and I wish to have it over before the heat of the day begins. Will
all the boys who agree to grant me this favor raise their right hands?”
Most of the right hands flew up as if their owners had nothing to do with
it; there was a very short pause, and then the remainder followed. Johnny
drew a long breath of intense relief. He knew that, although some of
the boys were anything but strictly truthful, they would consider it “a
little too mean” to break their pledge to their entertainer, and besides,
Mr. Leslie had said, emphatically, that there would be no hunting for
absentees, but simply a call at each door.
That picnic was unanimously pronounced the most brilliant of this, or
of any, season. Mr. Leslie was voted “as good as forty boys,” and the
woods rang again with laughter and joyous shouting. But when a long tin
horn had given the signal which had been agreed upon, and the boys were
gathered together for the return, Mr. Leslie mounted a convenient stump.
“Boys!” he said, as the noisy throng grew silent to listen, “No Fourth of
July celebration is complete without a speech, so I feel called upon to
make a short one. How does the Declaration of Independence begin?”
“‘All men are born free and equal, and endowed with certain inalienable
rights!’” shouted at least half the party.
“And what does ‘inalienable’ mean?” pursued the orator.
Silence. And then somebody said doubtfully, “Something you can’t lose or
give away?”
“Exactly,” said Mr. Leslie. “So, as we travel through life, we are to
bear in mind this fact, that no matter how great, or wise, or rich, or
powerful, or poor, or oppressed, or injured we may be, we are bound to
respect the ‘inalienable rights’ of other people, and that we shall never
gain anything really worth gaining, or that will bring a blessing with
it, by disregarding those rights.
“I will not undertake to tell you what they are; I think we can generally
tell nearly enough for all practical purposes by two ways; remembering
what we consider our own rights, and imagining what we should consider
our rights, were we in the places of the people with whom we are dealing.
We have had a happy day, I think; I know I have——”
“So have we!” in a vast shout from the audience——
“——and I have been pleased to see what good Republicans you all may be,
if you choose. I see you are pleased with my pleasure, and I want to
ask you all to remember, as each day closes, leaving its record of good
or evil, that the longest life must close some time, and that nothing
will be of much value to us then, but the Master’s ‘Well done, good and
faithful servant.’ Thank you for listening to me so patiently. This day
will be a pleasant memory, I hope, for all of us.”
“Three cheers for Mr. Leslie!” shouted the “fellow” who had not any
grandfather, and the amount of noise that followed was truly astonishing.
But a good many people’s ideas of what it is to be manly underwent a
gradual change from that evening.
“If Johnny’s father thinks so—why, there’s nothing mean about Johnny’s
father! I should hope we all knew that!”