Little Johnny was a saving youth--one who from early infancy had
cultivated a provident habit. When other little boys were wasting
their substance in riotous gingerbread and molasses candy, investing
in missionary enterprises which paid no dividends, subscribing to the
North Labrador Orphan Fund, and sending capital out of the country
gene rally, Johnny would be sticking sixpences into the chimney-pot of
a big tin house with "BANK" painted on it in red letters above an
illusory door. Or he would put out odd pennies at appalling rates of
interest, with his parents, and bank the income. He was never weary of
dropping coppers into that insatiable chimney-pot, and leaving them
there. In this latter respect he differed notably from his elder
brother, Charlie; for, although Charles was fond of banking too, he
was addicted to such frequent runs upon the institution with a
hatchet, that it kept his parents honourably poor to purchase banks
for him; so they were reluctantly compelled to discourage the
depositing element in his panicky nature.
Johnny was not above work, either; to him "the dignity of labour" was
not a juiceless platitude, as it is to me, but a living, nourishing
truth, as satisfying and wholesome as that two sides of a triangle are
equal to one side of bacon. He would hold horses for gentlemen who
desired to step into a bar to inquire for letters. He would pursue the
fleeting pig at the behest of a drover. He would carry water to the
lions of a travelling menagerie, or do anything, for gain. He was
sharp-witted too: before conveying a drop of comfort to the parching
king of beasts, he would stipulate for six-pence instead of the usual
free ticket--or "tasting order," so to speak. He cared not a button
for the show.
The first hard work Johnny did of a morning was to look over the house
for fugitive pins, needles, hair-pins, matches, and other unconsidered
trifles; and if he sometimes found these where nobody had lost them,
he made such reparation as was in his power by losing them again where
nobody but he could find them. In the course of time, when he had
garnered a good many, he would "realize," and bank the proceeds.
Nor was he weakly superstitious, this Johnny. You could not fool _him_
with the Santa Claus hoax on Christmas Eve: he would lie awake all
night, as sceptical as a priest; and along toward morning, getting
quietly out of bed, would examine the pendent stockings of the other
children, to satisfy himself the predicted presents were not there;
and in the morning it always turned out that they were not. Then, when
the other children cried because they did not get anything, and the
parents affected surprise (as if they really believed in the venerable
fiction), Johnny was too manly to utter a whimper: he would simply
slip out of the back door, and engage in traffic with affluent
orphans; disposing of woolly horses, tin whistles, marbles, tops,
dolls, and sugar archangels, at a ruinous discount for cash. He
continued these provident courses for nine long years, always banking
his accretions with scrupulous care. Everybody predicted he would one
day be a merchant prince or a railway king; and some added he would
sell his crown to the junk-dealers.
His unthrifty brother, meanwhile, kept growing worse and worse. He was
so careless of wealth--so so wastefully extravagant of lucre--that
Johnny felt it his duty at times to clandestinely assume control of
the fraternal finances, lest the habit of squandering should wreck the
fraternal moral sense. It was plain that Charles had entered upon the
broad road which leads from the cradle to the workhouse--and that he
rather liked the travelling. So profuse was his prodigality that there
were grave suspicions as to his method of acquiring what he so openly
disbursed. There was but one opinion as to the melancholy termination
of his career--a termination which he seemed to regard as eminently
desirable. But one day, when the good pastor put it at him in so many
words, Charles gave token of some apprehension.
"Do you really think so, sir?" said he, thoughtfully; "ain't you
playin' it on me?"
"I assure you, Charles," said the good man, catching a ray of hope
from the boy's dawning seriousness, "you will certainly end your days
in a workhouse, unless you speedily abandon your course of
extravagance. There is nothing like habit--nothing!"
Charles may have thought that, considering his frequent and lavish
contributions to the missionary fund, the parson was rather hard upon
him; but he did not say so. He went away in mournful silence, and
began pelting a blind beggar with coppers.
One day, when Johnny had been more than usually provident, and Charles
proportionately prodigal, their father, having exhausted moral suasion
to no apparent purpose, determined to have recourse to a lower order
of argument: he would try to win Charles to economy by an appeal to
his grosser nature. So he convened the entire family, and,
"Johnny," said he, "do you think you have much money in your bank?
You ought to have saved a considerable sum in nine years."
Johnny took the alarm in a minute: perhaps there was some barefooted
little girl to be endowed with Sunday-school books.
"No," he answered, reflectively, "I don't think there can be much.
There's been a good deal of cold weather this winter, and you know how
metal shrinks! No-o-o, I'm sure there can't be only a little."
"Well, Johnny, you go up and bring down your bank. We'll see. Perhaps
Charles may be right, after all; and it's not worth while to save
money. I don't want a son of mine to get into a bad habit unless it
pays."
So Johnny travelled reluctantly up to his garret, and went to the
corner where his big tin bank-box had sat on a chest undisturbed for
years. He had long ago fortified himself against temptation by vowing
never to even shake it; for he remembered that formerly when Charles
used to shake his, and rattle the coins inside, he always ended by
smashing in the roof. Johnny approached his bank, and taking hold of
the cornice on either side, braced himself, gave a strong lift
upwards, and keeled over upon his back with the edifice atop of him,
like one of the figures in a picture of the great Lisbon earthquake!
There was but a single coin in it; and that, by an ingenious device,
was suspended in the centre, so that every piece popped in at the
chimney would clink upon it in passing through Charlie's little hole
into Charlie's little stocking hanging innocently beneath.
Of course restitution was out of the question; and even Johnny felt
that any merely temporal punishment would be weakly inadequate to the
demands of justice. But that night, in the dead silence of his
chamber, Johnny registered a great and solemn swear that so soon as he
could worry together a little capital, he would fling his feeble
remaining energies into the spendthrift business. And he did so.
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