Sketches New and Old by Mark Twain

and was happy; and he brought him home and fed him, but when he was going

to pet him the dog flew at him and tore all the clothes off him except

those that were in front, and made a spectacle of him that was

astonishing. He examined authorities, but he could not understand the

matter. It was of the same breed of dogs that was in the books, but it

acted very differently. Whatever this boy did he got into trouble. The

very things the boys in the books got rewarded for turned out to be about

the most unprofitable things he could invest in.

Once, when he was on his way to Sunday-school, he saw some bad boys

starting off pleasuring in a sailboat. He was filled with consternation,

because he knew from his reading that boys who went sailing on Sunday

invariably got drowned. So he ran out on a raft to warn them, but a log

turned with him and slid him into the river. A man got him out pretty

soon, and the doctor pumped the water out of him, and gave him a fresh

start with his bellows, but he caught cold and lay sick abed nine weeks.

But the most unaccountable thing about it was that the bad boys in the

boat had a good time all day, and then reached home alive and well in the

most surprising manner. Jacob Blivens said there was nothing like these

things in the books. He was perfectly dumfounded.

When he got well he was a little discouraged, but he resolved to keep on

trying anyhow. He knew that so far his experiences wouldn’t do to go in

a book, but he hadn’t yet reached the allotted term of life for good

little boys, and he hoped to be able to make a record yet if he could

hold on till his time was fully up. If everything else failed he had his

dying speech to fall back on.

He examined his authorities, and found that it was now time for him to go

to sea as a cabin-boy. He called on a ship-captain and made his

application, and when the captain asked for his recommendations he

proudly drew out a tract and pointed to the word, “To Jacob Blivens, from

his affectionate teacher.” But the captain was a coarse, vulgar man, and

he said, “Oh, that be blowed! that wasn’t any proof that he knew how to

wash dishes or handle a slush-bucket, and he guessed he didn’t want him.”

This was altogether the most extraordinary thing that ever happened to

Jacob in all his life. A compliment from a teacher, on a tract, had

never failed to move the tenderest emotions of ship-captains, and open

the way to all offices of honor and profit in their gift it never had in

any book that ever he had read. He could hardly believe his senses.

This boy always had a hard time of it. Nothing ever came out according

to the authorities with him. At last, one day, when he was around

hunting up bad little boys to admonish, he found a lot of them in the old

iron-foundry fixing up a little joke on fourteen or fifteen dogs, which

they had tied together in long procession, and were going to ornament

with empty nitroglycerin cans made fast to their tails. Jacob’s heart

was touched. He sat down on one of those cans (for he never minded

grease when duty was before him), and he took hold of the foremost dog by

the collar, and turned his reproving eye upon wicked Tom Jones. But just

at that moment Alderman McWelter, full of wrath, stepped in. All the bad

boys ran away, but Jacob Blivens rose in conscious innocence and began

one of those stately little Sunday-school-book speeches which always

commence with “Oh, sir!” in dead opposition to the fact that no boy, good

or bad, ever starts a remark with “Oh, sir.” But the alderman never

waited to hear the rest. He took Jacob Blivens by the ear and turned him

around, and hit him a whack in the rear with the flat of his hand; and in