[Sidenote: Lunches]
Hapgood Cummings was the son of a wealthy merchant in Trenton, New
Jersey. He was the only child, and, accordingly, had been over-indulged
at home. Now in this, the seventh grade, he was looked upon by the rest
of the boys as a leader.
As several of the children in the school lived outside of the city
limits, they brought their lunches. One morning Hapgood said to a crowd
of boys in the school yard, “I bet I can carry off a stunt that the rest
of you can’t do.”
“What’s that?” came the response of his followers.
“I bet I can slip a lunch every recess from the dressing-room and no one
will be the wiser.”
“I dare you to do it.”
“All right.”
Hapgood asked to be excused from the room during the morning and took
the opportunity to empty a lunch box, which looked especially tempting,
into his pocket. At recess he said, “Look here, fellows. Don’t you wish
you were me?” At that he pulled a sandwich out of his pocket and
attacked it as if he had not eaten in days. His friends enviously looked
on.
The next day he was equally successful and correspondingly admired and
envied. After the third offense, Miss Nichols said, “Will the boy who
has taken a lunch from this dressing-room for the past three mornings,
please stand?”
Not a motion was made by anyone in the room. Hapgood sat rigidly still.
Not exactly sure what step to take next, Miss Nichols said, “If anyone
knows who took these lunches, he will help me by telling me.”
That noon a little girl who wanted to do as her teacher said told on
Hapgood.
At the beginning of the afternoon session, Miss Nichols said, “Hapgood
Cummings, why didn’t you tell me you stole the lunch from the
dressing-room? Don’t you know you were telling a lie by not standing
this morning?”
Hapgood had learned one thing at home: never to talk back, so he
thought, instead.
Misinterpreting his silence for meanness, Miss Nichols added, “You are
disgraced in the eyes of the room, Hapgood. You may stay after school
one hour every day, for one week.”