wicked any more, and rise up with a light, happy heart, and go and tell

his mother all about it, and beg her forgiveness, and be blessed by her

with tears of pride and thankfulness in her eyes. No; that is the way

with all other bad boys in the books; but it happened otherwise with this

Jim, strangely enough. He ate that jam, and said it was bully, in his

sinful, vulgar way; and he put in the tar, and said that was bully also,

and laughed, and observed "that the old woman would get up and snort"

when she found it out; and when she did find it out, he denied knowing

anything about it, and she whipped him severely, and he did the crying

himself. Everything about this boy was curious--everything turned out

differently with him from the way it does to the bad Jameses in the

books.

Once he climbed up in Farmer Acorn's apple tree to steal apples, and the

limb didn't break, and he didn't fall and break his arm, and get torn by

the farmer's great dog, and then languish on a sickbed for weeks, and

repent and become good. Oh, no; he stole as many apples as he wanted and

came down all right; and he was all ready for the dog, too, and knocked

him endways with a brick when he came to tear him. It was very strange

--nothing like it ever happened in those mild little books with marbled

backs, and with pictures in them of men with swallow-tailed coats and

bell-crowned hats, and pantaloons that are short in the legs, and women

with the waists of their dresses under their arms, and no hoops on.

Nothing like it in any of the Sunday-school books.

Once he stole the teacher's penknife, and, when he was afraid it would be

Sketches New and Old