HOW A GOOD BOY WAS SPOILED.

Evening Star, Issue 3650, 3 November 1874, Page 3

HOW A GOOD BOY WAS SPOILED.

{From the Detroit Free Press.) This was a good hoy. He would have been an angel to-day hut for the deceit of this false-hearted world. He wasn’t one of a set of triplets, and therefore didn t have honors showered down on him in his early days ; hut old women said there was foundation there for an'orator, a great general, or a philospher, and old men examined his head and said it was level. Nothing particular happened to Christopher Columbus until the eighth year of his reign. His childhood’s days wore lull of mud pies, and end of shingles, paregoric, castor oil, and straw hats with the irout hrim worn oil. He was a deep thinker and close observer for a small hoy, and he was just innocent enough to believe things which other boys pitch out of the window without a second thought. When Christopher was going on nine years old he heard somebody say that a “ penny saved was twopence earned.” He, therefore, laid a jbig bungdown ftwuy in a crack under the mopboard,

and every day he looked to see it grow to two cents. He had confidence and patience, but at length both gave way. Then he got the cent out one day, and Mrs Nortons baby swallowed it, and that was the last of that bungdown. The youthful Christopher didn’t believe in maxims quite as much as before, but he hadn’t cut all his eyeteeth yet. When the boy was a year older he heard it said that truth was mighty and it must prevail,” and that a boy who always spoke the truth would make a great and good man. He commenced to tell the truth. One day he got his father’s best razor out and hacked it on a stone, and when the old gent came home he asked who on earth had done that. Christopher Columbus spoke up and said :

“It was I, father—l notched your old razor.”

“ You did it, eh !” sneered the old man, as he looked up into the peach tiee j “ well, 111 fix you so you won’t never notch another razor forme !” And he cut a budding limb and diessed that boy down until the youth saw stars. That night Christopher Columbus determined never to tell the truth again unless by accident, and all through life he stuck to the resolution. When the lad was about twelve years old he read in a little book that "‘ honesty was the best policy.” He didn’t more than half believe it, but he thought he’d try. He went to being honest. One day his mother sent him to the grocery to buy eggs, but Bill Jones induced him to squander the change in the purchase of soda-water. When he got home his mother asked him for the little balance, and Christopher explained.

“ Spent it for soda, eh ?” she replied. “ Here your poor old mother is working like a slave, and you are around swilldown soda water! I don’t think you’ll swill any more, I don’t. Come oyer my right knee.” And she agitated him in the liveliest manner. That night as he turned on his downy straw bed, the hoy made up his mind that honesty didn’t pay, and he resolved to cheat the whole world if he could.

When Christopher was a half a year older became across the injunction:— “He kind to the poor.” He did not know’ whether it would pay or not, but he set about it. He knew’ of a poor woman who sadly needed a sprint bonnet, and lie took over his along with ti few other things, including his father’s second pair of boots, his own Sunday shoes, and so on. He went around feeling very big hearted until the old gentleman wanted to go to the lodge one night, and then it came out.

“Gin away ray boots, eliT inquired lus father : “ lugged your mother’s best bonnet off, eh 1” Well I don’t think you 11 remember the poor very much after to-night!” And he pounded Christopher Columbus with a pump handle until the boy fainted away, and even then he didn’t feel as he had made a thorough job of it. They fooled this boy once more. He heard a rich man say that everybody 4< make hay while the sun shone.” So when there came a sunny day the boy went out, took In's father’s scythe down from the plum tree and went to making hay. He broke the scythe, out down the tulips and hacked his sister in the heel, and his mother came out and led him round by the hair, and bounced him into a decline. They couldu t bamboozle this boy after that. He grew wicked every day of liis life, and before his eighteenth birthday he was hanged for murder He said he didn’t care a huckleberry about it and died without making the usual fourth of July oration.