THE TRUANT.
Johnny thought he knew better than his mother what was best for boys. Johnny’s mother thought it was not safe for boys to play about the streets. Johnny thought that was all nonsense. As Johnny could not get leave to play in the street, he thought he would play there without leave. One fine day, he snatched his cap slyly, when his mother was busy, and stepped out at the front door, and whipped round the corner in less time than I have taken to tell you about it. Wasn’t it delightful? What was the use of being a boy, if he must be tied to his mother’s apron-string, like a whimpering cry-baby of a girl? Other boys played in the street, plenty of them. True, they did not always have whole rims to their hats, and their jackets were buttonless, and their knees were through their trowsers; but what of that? They were “first-rate fellows to play.” True, they used bad words now and then, but he, Johnny, was not obliged to do so. His mother was a very nice mother, and he lovedher; but his mother never was a boy, and how could she tell what boys wanted? He did not mean to disobey her—oh, no; he only meant—pshaw! what was the use of wasting time thinking about that. Halloo! there’s an organ-grinder with a monkey; and there’s a man with three little fat pups to sell, black pups, with white paws, and curly drooping ears, and tails so short that they can’t even wag them; and there’s a shop-window with marbles and fire-crackers—what a pity he had no pence! And there’s a boy stealing molasses out of a hole in a hogshead by sucking it through a straw; and there are two boys at a fruit-stall—one talks to the old woman who keeps it, while the other slyly pockets an apple, without paying for it; and there’s a boy sprawling in the middle of the street, who tried to steal a ride on an omnibus step, and got a smart cut on his temple for his pains; and there—yes—there’s Tom Thumb’s carriage on a high cart. What funny little ponies. How Johnny wishes he were General Tom Thumb, instead of plain Johnny Scott. Silly boy, as if it were not better to be a fine full-grown man, able to fight for his country if she needed him, as Johnny will be some day, than to be passed round the country for a little hop o’ my thumb puppet show? And yonder is a great stone building. What can it be?Perhaps a bank. No, it is too big for that. What a great heavy door it has. It is not a meeting-house. No—and Johnny drew nearer. Now the big gate opens, and a crowd of people gather outside. Johnny goes a little nearer; nearer, nearer still; now he sees a cart stop before the door. ’Tis not a baker’s cart, nor a grocer’s cart, nor a milkman’s cart—but never mind the cart.
See! inside the gate across that fenced yard, come a dozen or more boys, about Johnny’s age, and a man with them. Who are they? What are they there for? Why is that man with them? And where are they going? Johnny edges a little nearer. Now he has one foot inside the gate, for the little boys are passing through, and he wants to look at them. Now they have all passed through. Where are they going in that cart?
“Come along, you little scapegrace. None of your lagging behind,” says the man who was with the boys, seizing Johnny roughly by the shoulder. “Come along, don’t you pull away from me. Come, it is no use crying for your mother—you should have thought of her before you stole those peaches. Where you are going? You know well enough that the Judge has sent the whole gang of you to Blackwell’s Islandand there’s the city cart to take you there; and I am the man to put you into it, and see that you go. None of your kicking, now. Come along, or it will be the worse for you.” And he seized Johnny, and lifting him by his trowsers into the cart as easily as you would handle a kitten, he locked him in with the other boys, and told the driver to go ahead. “Stop there,” said a man in the street to the driver; “stop there. That little fellow don’t belong to those bad boys. His name is little Johnny Scott. His mother is a neighbor of mine, a very nice woman too. I know her very well. He was only looking round the gate of ‘The Tombs’ to see what was going on. Let him out, I say. I will see him safe home. Oh, Johnny, Johnny, this comes of running about the street. You might have been carried to Blackwell’s Island, had it not been for me. What do you suppose your mother would say to see you here?”
Sure enough, that’s what Johnny thought, as he clambered out of the prison-wagon and wiped his eyes on his jacket sleeve. Sure enough, how could he ever look her in the face?
But his mother did not punish him. No, she thought rightly that he had punished himself enough; and so he had. It was a good lesson to him, and for a long timehe was ashamed to go out into the street, for fear some boy who was looking on that day, and had seen him pushed into the prison-cart, would halloo after him, “There goes a Blackwell Island boy.”