“Tom always was a peculiar boy. I never could understand him. He seemed to prefer any place on earth to his home, and he never would stay there if he could go anywhere else. Why it was so I am sure I don’t know. I tried my best to do my duty by him, and it is a great comfort to me now in my old age to know that nobody can tell me I spoiled him by sparing the rod. I was as strict with him as a father could be. When he was not at school I shut him up inside the yard to keep him out of the company of bad boys. I never allowed him to go to a theater or circus, but made him read his Bible every day and learn a portion of the New Testament every night before he went to bed. In the evening, as soon as the gas was lighted, I compelled him to bring out his school books and study them until nine o’clock. I exercised the strictest supervision over his reading, and burned every story paper, novel, book of travel, and trash of that sort that he brought into the house. I saw that he was regular in his attendance at church and Sunday-school, and on Sunday afternoons never permitted him to touch any books or papers except those of a religious character. In short, I tried to keep his mind so fully occupied with good and useful things that wicked and trifling ones could find no place in it. And how has my kindness been returned?” added the father sorrowfully. “Tom run away from home when the war broke out, and has never been near me since. He is now among those rough characters on the border, and if everything I hear is true, he is one of the worst of them. How a bad man can come from such a home as Tom had in his boyhood, is a mystery to me.”
But it was no mystery to me, for I had heard the other side of the story. A few weeks previous to this, while on my way to visit some friends in the East, it was my fortune to meet this same Tom in a distant State. I could scarcely recognize in him the innocent, meek-appearing boy I had known in years gone by. He was dressed in a red shirt, thrown open at the throat, coarse trousers thrust into a pair of high-top boots, and a tattered slouch hat which he wore cocked over his left ear. In a belt which encircled his waist he carried a navy six-shooter and a monstrous bowie-knife, both of which had been used with terrible effect in more than one personal encounter. He was a swaggering, swearing, boastful, dissipated fellow, and always seemed on the lookout for a chance to pick a quarrel with some one.
“You’re going home, Harry,” said he, as he grasped my hand at parting, “and I wish you joy of your visit. Would to Heaven I had a home to go to.”
“You have, Tom,” said I, “and your father would be glad to see you.”
“Don’t talk to me in that way,” he said, almost fiercely. “I know there is a house in an Eastern town where I used to stay when I was a boy, because I could go nowhere else, where I found shelter, food and clothing, and was daily strapped and scolded, but does that constitute a home? If it does, you writers and poets are all liars. You tell us home is a place around which one’s warmest affections cluster—a place consecrated by a mother’s presence, by her prayers and holy tears, whose sacred influence goes with us through life, and whose pleasant memories come thronging upon us when the tempter is near to keep us from being led astray. Such is the home of my dreams, but it is one I never knew and never shall know. I never knew a mother’s love, but was early made acquainted with the weight of a father’s hand. He was such a tyrant that I never could breathe easy in his presence. He denied me every boyish privilege and indulgence, and brought me up so strictly that I learned to despise everything good simply because he liked it. I hated the Sabbath, I hated the Bible, being held to so unreasonably strict an observance to the one, and so often compelled against my wishes to commit to memory whole pages of the other. I resolved, as far back as I can remember, that if I could once free myself from home, I’d see life and make up for lost time, and you know as well as I can tell you how I have kept that resolution. I am sorry for it now, but it is too late. I can’t live my life over again. I have come to such a pass that nobody cares for me.”
Tom’s under lip begun to quiver and his eyes to fill with tears. Ashamed of the weakness, he dashed his hand across his face, uttered an oath under his breath and swaggered off to the nearest saloon. What will his end be? The rope of a vigilance committee, or the bullet of some fellow desperado?
Parents, it is a serious matter to send a boy into the world with no pleasant recollections of yourselves or of home to restrain him in the hour of temptation.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELER.
