“Our parents often spoke of his late master as ‘old Reuben,’ but children are not easily disabused of a favorite fancy, and in Patty’s thoughts and in mine the old man was long gratefully remembered as Old Father Christmas.”
BENJY IN BEASTLAND.
A BAD BOY.
Benjy was a bad boy. His name was Benjamin, but he was always called Benjy. He looked like something ending in jy or gy, or rather dgy, such as podgy. Indeed he was podgy, and moreover smudgy, having that cloudy, slovenly look (like a slate smudged instead of washed) which is characteristic of people whose morning toilet is not so thorough as it should be.
Boys are very nice creatures. Far be it from us to think, with some people, that they are nuisances to be endured as best may be till they develop into men. An intelligent and modest boy is one of the most charming of companions. As to an obliging boy (that somewhat rare but not extinct animal), there is hardly a limit to his powers of usefulness; or anything—from emigrating to a desert island to cleaning the kitchen clock—that one would not feel justified in undertaking with his assistance, and free access to his pocket stores.
Then boys’ wholesale powers of accumulation and destruction render their dens convenient storehouses of generally useless and particularly useful lumber. If you want string or wire, or bottles or flower-pots, or a bird-cage, or an odd glove or shoe, or anything of any kind to patch up something of a similar kind, or missing property of your own or another’s—go to a boy’s room! There one finds abundance of everything, from cobbler’s wax to the carmine from one’s own water-color box.
(One is apt to recognize old acquaintances, and one occasionally reclaims their company!)
All things are in a more or less serviceable condition, and at the same time sufficiently damaged to warrant appropriation to the needs of the moment. One suffers much loss at boys’ hands from time to time, and it is trying to have dainty feminine bowers despoiled of their treasures; but there are occasions when one spoils the spoiler!
Then what admirable field naturalists boys can make! They are none the worse for nocturnal moth hunts, or for wading up a stream for a Batrachosperma, or for standing in a pond pressing recruits for the fresh-water aquarium. A “collection” more or less is as nothing in the vast chaos of their possessions, though some scrupulous sister might be worried to find “a place for it.” And Fortune (capricious dame!) is certainly fond of boys, and guides some young “harum-scarum” to a habitat that has eluded the spectacles of science. And their cuttings always grow!