A quarter of a century seems not to have wrought much change; we still believe in the old moral precepts, and teach them to others, but we still strive to get the best of everything for ourselves.
I wonder if the old school-readers have been changed since I was a boy at school. Are the same lessons there to-day? We were such striking examples of what the books would not do that one would almost think the publishers would drop the lessons out.
I try to recall the feelings of one child who read those stories in the little white schoolhouse by the country road. What did they mean to me? Did I laugh at them, as I do to-day? Or did I really think that they were true, and try and try, and then fail in all I tried, as I do now? I presume the latter was the case; yet for my life I cannot recall the thoughts and feelings that these stories brought to me. But I can still recall the stories.
I remember, as if it were yesterday, the story about the poor widow of Pine Cottage, in the winter, with her five ragged children hovering around her little table. Widows usually had large families then, and most of their boys were lame. This poor widow had at last reached the point where starvation faced her little brood. She had tasted no food for twenty-four hours. Her one small herring was roasting on the dying coals. The prospect was certainly very dark; but she had faith, and somehow felt that in the end she would come out all right. A knock is heard at the back door. A ragged stranger enters and asks for food; the poor widow looks at her five starving children, and then she gives the visitor the one last herring; he eats it, and lo and behold! the stranger is her long-lost son,—probably one that was left over from the time when she was a widow before. The long-lost son came in this disguise to find out whether or not his mother really loved him. He was, in fact, rich; but he had borrowed the rags at the tavern, and had just arrived from India with a shipload of gold, which he at once divided among his mother and brothers and sisters. How could any child fail to be generous after this? And yet I venture to say that if any of us took a herring to school for dinner the day that we read this story in our class, we clung to it as tenaciously as a miser to his gold.
Then there was the widow with her one lame son, who asks the rich merchant for a little charity. He listens to her pathetic story, and believes she tells the truth. He asks her how much she needs. She tells him that five dollars will be enough. He writes a check, and tells her to go across the street to the bank. She takes it over without reading it. The banker counts out fifty dollars. She says, “There is a mistake; I only asked for five dollars.” The banker goes across the street to find out the truth, and the merchant says: “Yes, there was a mistake, I should have made it five hundred,”—which he straightway does. Thus honesty and virtue are rewarded once again. I have lived many years and travelled in many lands, and have seen more or less of human nature and of suffering and greed; I have seen many poor widows,—but have never yet come across the generous merchant.
There was no end to the good diligent boys and girls of whom the readers told; they were on every page we turned, and every one of them received his or her reward and received it right away in cash. There never was the slightest excuse or need for us to be anything but diligent and kind,—and still our young hearts were so perverse and hard that we let the lessons pass unheeded, and clutched at the smallest piece of pie or cake, or the slightest opportunity to deceive some good kind teacher, although we must have known that we missed a golden chance to become President of the United States and have money in the bank besides.
One story of a contented boy stands out so clearly in my mind that I could not refrain from hunting up the old schoolbook and reading it once more. It must have made a wonderful impression on my mind, for there it is, “The Contented Boy.” I cannot recall that I ever was contented in my life, and I am sure that I have never seen a boy like this one in the reader; but it is not possible that I knew my schoolbooks were clumsy, stupid lies. After all this time there is the story, clear and distinct; and this is the way it runs:
THE CONTENTED BOY.
Mr. Lenox was riding by himself. He got off from his horse to look at something on the roadside. The horse broke away from him and ran off. Mr. Lenox ran after him, but could not catch him.
A little boy at work in a field, near the road, heard the horse. As soon as he saw him running from his master, the boy ran very quickly to the middle of the road, and catching the horse by the bridle, stopped him till Mr. Lenox came up.