THE BOOK OF GOOD CHILDREN
Therewas once a little boy whom every one called the Little Brown Boy. This was because his name was Brown and because his hair and his eyes were dark brown, too.
Of course he had another name, indeed, he had two—William John. But no one except his mother and father, and his aunts and uncles, and the minister, when he came to tea, ever called him anything but the Little Brown Boy.
One night the Little Brown Boy lay in bed as wide awake as ever he could be. He had been so sleepy when his mother put him to bed that he couldn’t stand up straight to take off his clothes. But once tucked in bed and his mother gone downstairs, the Little Brown Boy’s eyes flewopen and he felt as lively as if it were morning instead of his usual bed-time, seven o’clock.
The Little Brown Boy looked from his bed out of the open window at the tree-tops that were tossing and nodding in a gay West Wind. Down from the trees whirled the Autumn leaves, red and yellow and russet-brown, flying and falling here and there, rustling where they fell.
Bump! Bump! Bump!
The Little Brown Boy knew what that sound meant. Nuts were blowing off the great walnut tree that stood over the way from the Little Brown Boy’s house.
Whisk! Scrabble! Rush!
That was a squirrel traveling over the roof, as the Little Brown Boy well knew.
In the next room, through the half-open door, the Little Brown Boy could see his toys lying about on the floor.There was his Jack-in-the-Box, looking very uncomfortable, indeed, with his head hanging over the side of the box almost touching the ground. There was his Jumping Jack, tossed in a corner, arms and legs stretched out to jump, and a tired look upon his little painted face. A company of smart red-and-blue tin soldiers lay in an untidy heap, face down, their Captain buried underneath them all. You wouldn’t dream that they were soldiers if you didn’t see their uniforms and swords and guns. There was a gray horse and a scarlet wagon, both standing on their heads. There were fire-engines, topsy-turvy, scattered here and there. A Mother Goose picture-book lay under a chair, and if you had been close by you would have seen that Mother Goose on the cover did not seem at all pleased at finding herself in such a place.
What was the matter with this play-room,that the toys lay scattered about on the floor? Why were they not put neatly away in closet and cupboard and drawer?
I will tell you.
The Little Brown Boy never, never put away his toys!
His mother talked and scolded and even shut him in the closet now and then. His father shook his head and said to his mother, ‘Well, I shall have to leave this to you.’ His pretty Aunt Jeannie said she would give him a present if only he would put away his toys every night. His tall Uncle Joe promised to take him to the circus if he would pick up his playthings for a week.
He simply would not put away his toys!
But nothing did any good. Not talking nor scolding, for the Little Brown Boy didn’t listen. Not shutting in the closet nor even going to bed in the middle of the day, for no sooner was he out at play again than the Little Brown Boy had forgottenall about it. Nothing was of any use. He simply would not put away his toys!
Now, as the Little Brown Boy lay snug in his bed, something very strange indeed happened to him. In at the open window came the gay West Wind with a laugh and a loud, loud puff!!! In a twinkling he whirled the Little Brown Boy out of bed, twirled him out of the window, and then blew him along through the air at such a pace that for a moment the Little Brown Boy scarcely knew just who or where he was.
When at last he could look about him he found he was sitting on an Autumn leaf, holding tight with both hands, and riding along through the air so fast that the Wind whistled past his ears.
‘Where am I going?’ called the Little Brown Boy to the Wind. ‘Where am I going? Tell me, do!’
The Wind blew him along through the air
But the Wind only shouted ‘Whoo-oo-oo!’ and blew the little boy along faster than ever before.
The big round Moon laughed down at the Little Brown Boy. The Starstwinkled and gleamed as if they were laughing too.
On and on went the Autumn leaf, whirling and twirling and dancing along until the Little Brown Boy spied a great snow-white Palace just ahead. Straight to this Palace the Wind blew the Autumn leaf. Down, down, down whirled the leaf until it rested on the Palace front steps. And then, of course, there was nothing for the Little Brown Boy to do but to jump off the leaf and look about him.
The ground was covered all roundabout with snow, smooth, hard, shining snow, but, strangely enough, in spite of his bare toes, the Little Brown Boy didn’t feel cold at all. Perhaps he was too excited. I don’t know. He stared with wide-open eyes at the great snow-white Palace, glittering in the moonlight. Then over to a half-open window, from which streamed a rosy light, crept the LittleBrown Boy, and, clinging to the window-sill, he peeped into the room.
What the Little Brown Boy saw inside the room almost made him tumble backward into the snow.
For, before his very eyes sat Santa Claus, the Santa Claus whose picture the Little Brown Boy had seen many, many times, and who, for as many years as the Little Brown Boy could remember, had crept down his chimney on Christmas Eve and left him toys of all sorts and kinds. Roundabout Santa Claus sat his Brownies, his gay little helpers and toy-makers, and they were listening carefully to every word that Santa Claus had to say. On a table, in front of the fire, there lay a great open Book, and from that Book, so it seemed to the Little Brown Boy, Santa Claus was reading children’s names.
‘Caroline Jones,’ read Santa Claus aloud.
‘A very good girl,’ he added. ‘She minds her mother and goes to bed every night without crying.’
When they heard this the Brownies shouted, ‘Hurrah! Hurrah!’ and clapped their hands. They seemed as pleased as pleased could be to hear this news of Caroline Jones.
Santa Claus bent over the Book again.
‘Tom Robinson,’ read Santa Claus aloud.
‘A better boy than he was a month ago,’ said he, looking round with a smile. ‘He is polite to his grandmother, and runs errands without grumbling, and cleans his finger nails, sometimes, without being told.’
‘Good! Good!’ shouted the Brownies. And again they clapped their tiny hands.
At the next name Santa Claus looked sober and not a single Brownie smiled.
‘Johnny Smith,’ read Santa Claus, and,with a shake of the head, he dipped his pen into a bottle of black, black ink.
Santa Claus was reading children’s names
‘He still worries the cat in spite of all that has been said to him, and I hear he has been poking his mother’s canary birdwith a stick.’ Santa Claus’s merry face was now very sober indeed. ‘His name must be crossed out, though I don’t like to do it.’
And with his long pen Santa Claus slowly drew a heavy black line through the name ‘Johnny Smith.’
‘Oh! Oh!’ sighed the Brownies, shaking their heads. ‘Too bad! Too bad!’
‘He will have nothing in his stocking next Christmas but a lump of coal,’ said one Brownie in a low voice to his neighbor.
‘And an apple with a bite in it,’ added another Brownie, looking sad.
‘But if he is a good boy between now and Christmas, you will put his name back in the Book of Good Children, won’t you, Santa Claus?’ asked several Brownies, eager to be as hopeful as they could.
The Little Brown Boy did not hear Santa Claus’s answer. The Book of Good Children! So that is what it was all about!The Little Brown Boy held tightly to the window-sill and almost put his head into the room.
Of course he knew what the Book of Good Children was. We all do. The Book in which Santa Claus keeps the names of all the Children whom he is to visit on Christmas Eve. What surprised the Little Brown Boy was that Santa Claus had actually crossed out a little boy’s name from his Book. Though his mother had often warned him just before Christmas that this might happen to him, he had never believed that Santa Claus would do such a thing.
But now Santa Claus was reading again from his great thick Book. And at what he heard the Little Brown Boy could scarcely believe his ears.
‘Dear! Dear!’ Santa Claus was saying. ‘Here is another name that must be crossed out.’
And slowly and sadly Santa Claus read the name aloud.
‘The Little Brown Boy!’ read he.
‘Oh, no, Santa Claus!’ called out all the Brownies, their kind little faces quite wrinkled with distress. ‘Don’t cross out his name to-night. Give him another chance. Perhaps he will learn to pick up his toys. Don’t cross off his name to-night.’
Before Santa Claus could answer or even lay down his pen, there was a noise from the window that made Santa Claus and the Brownies jump to their feet. Over the window-sill rose the head of a little boy. His eyes were round as buttons with fright, his mouth was open to call, ‘No! No! No!’ and every single hair stood straight on end with excitement, which, as you may imagine, gave him a very strange look indeed.
The next moment the little boy, whowas dressed in his night-clothes, came scrambling through the half-open window into the room. Straight to Santa Claus he ran and clasped him round his great high boots.
‘No! No! No!’ called out the little boy again, squeezing Santa Claus’s boots close in his arms. ‘Don’t cross out my name! I will be good! I will put away my toys every night! Don’t leave a coal in my stocking at Christmas! Don’t give me an apple with a bite! Oh! Oh! Oh!’
Here the little boy could say no more, for he hadn’t a speck of breath left.
‘Well, well, well,’ said Santa Claus, sitting down and lifting the little boy to his knee, ‘it is the Little Brown Boy himself, I do declare.’
‘Yes,’ nodded the Little Brown Boy with a sniff, ‘and I am going to put away my toys every night after this. I promise you, Santa Claus. I promise I will.’
‘Good!’ answered Santa Claus heartily. ‘Good! Your name is still in the Book. It isn’t crossed off yet. See for yourself.’
And there, in Santa Claus’s own Book of Good Children, the Little Brown Boy, leaning from Santa Claus’s knee, saw his name written as plain as plain could be.
‘Why don’t you take him up to see the toys?’ suggested Santa Claus to his Brownies, who were now smiling and nodding at one another and hopping about.
So upstairs they went to a great room filled to every corner with toys very much like those the Little Brown Boy had at home.
At their first glimpse of the Little Brown Boy, the toys became excited, so excited that the Little Brown Boy held fast to the Brownies’ hands. For the toys began to call out and all talk at once andtell the Little Brown Boy just how toys felt when they were left lying on the floor at night.
‘We want to rest in our own stable and not lie out in the cold,’ whinnied the horses, stamping their feet and tossing their heads as they spoke.
‘We like to be packed neatly in our box,’ said the tin soldiers, giving the Little Brown Boy a fine salute. ‘It is so untidy and unlike a soldier to lie about on the floor.’
‘We can’t drive straight and with speed to a fire,’ spoke out the firemen, growing red in the face, ‘unless our fire-engines are placed in a row on the shelf. You must understand how that is yourself.’
The Little Brown Boy nodded. He did begin to understand.
‘My legs grow stiff when I lie on the floor,’ complained the Jumping Jack, withan injured look. ‘I can’t jump so well. Could you?’
‘No,’ murmured the Little Brown Boy, hanging his head and almost putting his finger in his mouth, but not quite.
‘Oh, what a crick I have in my neck!’ said the Jack-in-the-Box, making a comical face, ‘unless I am put in my box with the cover fastened down tight.’
And the Jack-in-the-Box crouched down and then gave a mighty spring into the air as if to show that he had no crick in his neck at the present time.
As for Mother Goose on the picture-book, she shook her finger at the Little Brown Boy, but she forgave him with a smile, as did all the toys, when he promised them solemnly, just as he had promised Santa Claus, that he would put his toys neatly away every night.
‘I won’t forget,’ said the Little Brown Boy. ‘I promise.’
The Brownies were so happy when they heard this that they said, ‘Let’s have a feast.’
So sitting round the fire, with Santa Claus looking on, they all roasted chestnuts and popped corn, the Little Brown Boy too. And they ate and they ate and they ate until they couldn’t eat any more.
Never before, so he thought, had the Little Brown Boy had such a good time. But at last it was the Brownies’ bed-time, and the Little Brown Boy on his leaf was whirled swiftly and safely home.
When he woke in the morning the first thing he did was to pick up all his toys and put them neatly away. And once in their proper places, the toys all gave a sigh of relief and fell fast asleep, they were so worn out from lying on the floor.
Then the Little Brown Boy crept intohis mother’s bed and told her all that had happened to him the night before.
‘What do you think of that?’ asked the Little Brown Boy when he had finished.
The Little Brown Boy crept into his mother’s bed
He was much surprised to have his mother answer, ‘I think it was all a dream.’
‘A dream?’ exclaimed the Little Brown Boy. ‘How can it be a dream? Look here!’
From the pocket in his night-clothes he pulled a chestnut, a roasted chestnut that the Brownies had given to him last night.
‘How can it be a dream?’ asked the Little Brown Boy again.
‘I don’t know,’ answered his mother. ‘Perhaps it did happen. At any rate, I am glad that, after this, you are going to pick up your toys every night.’
‘I am,’ said the Little Brown Boy with a nod. ‘I promised Santa Claus.’
And I don’t have to tell you that the Little Brown Boy kept his word.