A STORY FOR BOYS.
Now, boys, I am going to write a story for you. I don’t know why I have written more stories for girls than for boys, unless it is because all the boys I ever had have been girls. Sometimes I have been sorry this was so, because I think boys can rough it through the world so much better than girls, especially should the latter have the misfortune to lose their father when they are young. I hope this is not the case with you; it is very sad for young eyes to be watching the way he used to come, and see only other happy gleeful children with their living, breathing, loving, fathers.
But I will not talk about this now. I want to tell you that I do love boys, though I am very much afraid of them.
Afraid?
Yes; now you need not look so innocent, just as if you never, when a lady had picked her way carefully through the sloppy streets, jumped into a big puddle near her, and sent the dirty water all over her nice white stockings, and pretty gaiter boots—ah—you see I know you; just as if you hadn’t come rushing round a corner when you were playing tag, and knocked the breath out of a woman before she could say “Don’t;” just as if you didn’t eat peanuts in an omnibus and let the wind blow the shells into her lap; just as if you didn’t put your muddy shoes up on the omnibus seat, and soil the cushions, and spoil ladies’ dresses; just as if you did not—you rogues—say saucy things to bashful little girls, at which your schoolmates Tom Tules and Sam Hall would burst into a loud laugh and the poor little girl would have to go a long way round to school the next morning merely to get rid of you. I should be sorry to believe that you know how much pain you sometimes give a little girl in this way: perhaps her mother is a widow and has to earn her own living, and can not spare time every morning to go with her daughter to school, or to call for her when school is done; and it pains her very much to have to send the weeping child who is so afraid of you, out alone; and she sighs when she thinks of the time when that child’s father was alive, and they had plenty of money to hire a nurse-maid to see that she did not get run over or troubled on her way.
I don’t believe you think of this, when you slyly pull their curls as you go by, or make believe snatch their satchels, or elbow them off the sidewalk, to please that naughty Frank Hale, who says, “’Tis fun.” I am sure you never thought seriously of all I have just told you, or you would not do it.
A stupid boy who never wants “fun” will never be good for any thing. But it is not “fun” to give pain to the weak, timid, and helpless; it is not fun to play the tyrant. Oh, no, no. It is fun to play ball, and hop-scotch; and it is fun to skate, and slide, and “coast,” as the Boston boys call it (i.e., go down a steep, icy hill on a sled); but this steep, icy hill should not be in the street, where horses and carriages are, crossed by other streets, through which people are passing. A little boy was once coasting very fast down such a hill as this, and when a very prim maiden lady was picking her way across it. On came the boy, like lightning, tripped up her heels, and carried her down on his sled, on top of him, to the bottom of the hill. She was, fortunately, not hurt. She got slowly up, smoothed out her rumpled dress, bent her bonnet straight, put her spectacles on the end of her nose, and looking at the little boy (who stood there quite as much astonished as she at what he had done), she remarked, “Young man, it was not my intention to have come this way!” He got off easily, didn’t he? But had he broken any of her bones, a policeman would perhaps have rung at his father’s door some time that day, and his father would have been obliged to pay a fine, because his boy broke the law by “coasting” in the streets—(that’s Boston law). And beside that, had the lady been poor, his father would have had to pay a doctor for mending her bones. Don’t think I do not approve of coasting in safe places. It is what boys call “prime.” I like to coast as well as you do; and when you get a nice sled, with good “runners,” I should like to try it. If it goes like chain-lightning, you may name it Fanny Fern; but if it twists round at every little thing in the path, and don’t go straight ahead, you may call it—what you like; but don’t you dare to name it after me.