Then Sammy began to cry real hard, for he thought of his poor mother, off there in Massachusetts, wondering day after day, “What has become of my Sammy!”
And then to be compelled to eat nothing but ginger all his life! It was awful! He already hated ginger. He looked so woebegone that they all cried:
“If you will promise to be good, and think before you do things, we will let you go! But if you don’t keep your promise we’ll get you again, and then, look out!”
So Sammy promised, and ran for home. But the black people seemed to regret having let him off so easily, and they all came trooping after him!
You should have seen Sammy run! He went over through India, and across Afghanistan, Persia and Turkey like a streak of lightning! He plunged into the Mediterranean and swam across to Italy. From Italy he swam to Spain; and across Spain, from Tarragona to Cape Finisterre, he ran like the Rapids of the River St. Lawrence, the black people at his heels!
He was almost exhausted as he dove off Cape Finisterre into the broad Atlantic, and he would have sunk down deep, for fifteen or twenty miles, if a friendly dolphin hadn’t come along and invited him to ride on its shiny back!
The black men gave up the chase then, and the dolphin swam over to Massachusetts Bay, up Boston Harbor, to the Charles River, to the bridge by Sammy’s home. There the dolphin said good-by, told Sammy to always be a good boy, and then, with a flip of its tail, it rushed down the river—and Sammy awoke!
It had all been a dream, of course; but it cured Sammy of thoughtlesness, and nobody ever had cause again to say that Sammy Swattles wasn’t all a nice little boy should be. He told his employer all about it, and his employer said: “Well, be a good boy, and never do anything without thinking of whether it’s right or wrong to do it.”
John Ernest McCann.