ol door at recess, and, unseen myself, I saw the theft
committed!" And then Jim didn't get whaled, and the venerable justice
didn't read the tearful school a homily, and take George by the hand and
say such boy deserved to be exalted, and then tell him come and make his
home with him, and sweep out the office, and make fires, and run errands,
and chop wood, and study law, and help his wife do household labors, and
have all the balance of the time to play and get forty cents a month, and
be happy. No it would have happened that way in the books, but didn't
happen that way to Jim. No meddling old clam of a justice dropped in to
make trouble, and so the model boy George got thrashed, and Jim was glad
of it because, you know, Jim hated moral boys. Jim said he was "down on
them milksops." Such was the coarse language of this bad, neglected boy.

But the strangest thing that ever happened to Jim was the time he went
boating on Sunday, and didn't get drowned, and that other time that he
got caught out in the storm when he was fishing on Sunday and didn't get
struck by lightning. Why, you might look, and look, all through the
Sunday-school books from now till next Christmas, and you would never
come across anything like this. Oh, no; you would find that all the bad
boys who go boating on Sunday invariably get drowned; and all the bad
boys who get caught out in storms when they are fishing on Sunday
infallibly get struck by lightning. Boats with bad boys in them always
upset on Sunday, and it always storms when bad boys go fishing on the
Sabbath. How this Jim ever escaped is a mystery to me.

This Jim bore a charmed life--that must have been the way of it. Nothing
could hurt him. He even gave the elephant in the menagerie a plug of
tobacco, and the elephant didn't knock the top of his head off with his
trunk. He browsed around the cupboard after essence-of peppermint, and
didn't make a mistake and drink aqua fortis. He stole his father's gun
and went hunting on the Sabbath, and didn't shoot three or four of his
fingers off. He struck his little sister on the temple with his fist
when he was angry, and she didn't linger in pain through long summer
days, and die with sweet words of forgiveness upon her lips that
redoubled the anguish of his breaking heart. No; she got over it. He
ran off and went to sea at last, and didn't come back and find himself
sad and alone in the world, his loved ones sleeping in the quiet