Still, you see, Sam sinned once too often. Even though his crimes were never more serious than putting guinea-pigs into the master’s desk, yet that sort of conduct time after time is not to be tolerated in any school. The example set by a mischievous boy to his fellows is not good; and if his scrapes are winked at always, the time will come when others will be encouraged to follow in his steps, and behave badly too. Sam, no doubt, deserved the punishment he got; and because one bad boy who is punished is no worse than a dozen bad boys who get off, that does not make him out a good boy, or a boy more hardly treated than he merited.
Scapegraces are boys who, being mischievously inclined, are constantly transgressing the line between right and wrong. Up to a certain point, a boy of good spirits and fond of his joke, is as jolly a boy as one could desire; but when his good spirits break the bounds of order, and his jokes interfere with necessary authority, then it is time for him to be reminded nothing ought to be carried too far in this world.
One last word about scapegraces. Don’t, like Sam, get it into your heads that you are destined to get into scrapes, and that therefore it is no use trying to keep out of them. That would be a proof of nothing but your silliness. I can’t tell you how it was Sam’s stone always broke the window, or why the master’s eye always fell on him when there was a row going on; but I can tell you this, that if Sam hadn’t thrown the stone, the window would not have been broken; and that if he had behaved well when the master’s eye was turned away, he would not have cut a poor figure when the door was opened. Some boys make a boast of the number of scrapes they have been in, and fondly imagine themselves heroes in proportion to the number of times they have been flogged. Well, if it pleases them to think so, by all means let them indulge the fancy; but we can at least promise them this—nobody else thinks so!
Chapter Fourteen.
The Unoriginal Boy.
It takes one a long time to discover that there is something wanting in the character of Ebenezer Ditto; and it takes a longer time still to make out exactly what that something is. He’s an ordinary-looking and ordinarily-behaved boy. There’s nothing amiss with the cut of his coat—it’s neither extra grand nor extra shabby; there’s nothing queer about his voice—he doesn’t stammer and he doesn’t squeak; there’s nothing remarkable about his conversation or his actions—he’s not a dunce, though he’s not clever; he’s not a scamp, though he’s not goody; he never offends any one, though he never becomes great friends with any one. What is it makes us not take to Ebenezer? Why is it, on the whole, we rather despise him, and feel annoyed when in his society? For, it is the truth, we don’t much care about him.
Well, the answer to this question may be, as I have said, not very readily discovered; but if you watch Master Ditto carefully, and make up your mind, you will get at the bottom of the mystery, you will find that it is this very “ordinary” manner about him to which you object. The fellow is dull—he is unoriginal.
You feel sometimes as if you would give a sovereign to see Ebenezer stand on his head, by way of variety. It annoys you when he sits there with his eyes on you, smiling when you smile, frowning when you frown, talking about the weather when you talk about the weather, and when you whistle “Nancy Lee” whistling his everlasting “Grandfather’s Clock.” It is a relief, by the way, even to hear him whistle a different tune, for it is about the only thing in which he does take an independent course. But, if truth were known, it would come out he only knows this one tune, and that is the reason. He has not originality enough in him to learn a second.