Read Ebook: The Court of Boyville by White William Allen Lowell Orson Illustrator Verbeek Gustave Illustrator

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Ebook has 419 lines and 32039 words, and 9 pages

He sat on a log and slowly lifted up his foot, twisting his face into an agonized knot

"Spit, spit, spy, tell me whur my chicken is, er I'll hit ye in the eye"

"I'll pay for your chicken, I say. Now you keep away from me"

An irregular circumference that touched his ears and his chin and his hair

"Got anything here fit to eat?"

"What'd you want to take Annie's doll away from her for?"

She drew him down and kissed his cheek while he pecked at her lips

Piggy Pennington ... galloped his father's fat delivery horse up and down the alley

Mammoth Consolidated Shows

Oil made by hanging a bottle of angle-worms in the sun to fry

How many bags of carpet rags went to the ragman

Brother Baker--a tiptoeing Nemesis

Dressed-up children were flitting along the side streets, hurrying their seniors

The Balloon-Vender wormed his way through the buzzing crowd, leaving his wares in a red and blue trail behind him

The Blue Sash about the country girl's waist and the flag in her Beau's hat

"One's a trick elephant. You'd die a-laughing if you saw him"

"It's an awful good one. Can't he go just this once?"

"Well, son, you're a daisy. They generally drop the first kick"

The other wranglers ... dropped out for heavy repairs

When Mr. Pennington's eyes fell on Bud, he leaned on a show-case and laughed till he shook all over

"Miss Morgan, I just want you to look at my boy"

"Now, Henry, don't ever have anything to do with that kind of trash again"

"Here's a dollar I got for ridin' the trick mule ... I thought it would be nice for the missionary society"

"Gee, we're going to have pie, ain't we"

We who are passing "through the wilderness of this world" find it difficult to realize what an impenetrable wall there is around the town of Boyville. Storm it as we may with the simulation of light-heartedness, bombard it with our heavy guns, loaded with fishing-hooks and golf-sticks, and skates and base-balls, and butterfly-nets, the walls remain. If once the clanging gates of the town shut upon a youth, he is banished forever. From afar he may peer over the walls at the games inside, but he may not be of them. Let him try to join them, and lo, the games become a mockery, and he finds that he is cavorting still outside the walls, while the good citizens inside are making sly sport of him. Who, being recently banished from Boyville, has not sought to return? In vain does he haunt the swimming hole; the water elves will have none of him. He hushes their laughter, muffles their calls, takes the essence from their fun, and leaves it dust upon their lips.

But we of the race of grown-ups are a purblind people. Otherwise, when we acknowledge what a stronghold this Boyville is, we the banished would not seek to steal away the merry townsmen, and bruise our hearts and theirs at our hopeless task. We have learned many things in our schools, and of the making of books there has been no end; so it is odd that we have not learned to let a boy be a boy. Why not let him feel the thrill from the fresh spring grass under his feet, as his father felt it before him, and his father's father, even back to Adam, who walked thus with God! There is a tincture of iron that seeps into a boys blood with the ozone of the earth, that can come to him by no other way. Let him run if he will; Heavens air is a better elixir than any that the alchemist can mix. What if he roams the woods and lives for hours in the water? What if he prefers the barn to the parlor? What if he fights? Does he not take the risk of the scratched face and the bruises? Should he not be in some measure the judge of the situation before him when the trouble begins? Boys have an ugly name for one of their kind who discovers suddenly, in a crisis of his own making, that he is not allowed to fight. And it were better to see a boy with a dozen claw-marks down his face than to see him eat that name in peace.

Now this conclusion may seem barbaric to elders who have to pay for new clothes to replace the torn ones, And according to their light perhaps the elders see clearly. But the grown-up people forget that their wisdom has impaired their vision to see as boys see and to pass judgment upon things in another sphere.

For Boyville is a Free Town in the monarchy of the world. Its citizens mind their own business, and they desire travellers in this waste to do likewise. The notion that spectacled gentry should come nosing through the streets and alleys of Boyville, studying the sanitation, which is not of the best, and objecting to the constitution and by laws,--which were made when the rivers were dug and the hills piled up,--the notion of an outsider interfering with the Divine right of boys to eat what they please, to believe what they please, and, under loyalty to the monarchy of the world, to do what they please, is repugnant to this free people. Nor does it better matters when the man behind the spectacles explains that to eat sheep-sorrel is deleterious; to feed younkers Indian turnip is cruel; to suck the sap of the young grapevine in spring produces malaria; to smoke rattan is depraving, and to stuff one's stomach with paw-paws and wild-grapes is dangerous in the extreme.

For does not the first article of the law of this Free Town expressly state, that boys shall be absolved from obeying any and all laws regulating the human stomach, and be free of the penalties thereto attaching? And again when Wisdom says that the boy shall give up his superstitions, the boy points to hoary tradition, which says that the snakes tail does not in fact and in truth die till sundown; that if a boy kills a lucky bug he shall find a nickel; that to cross one's heart and lie, brings on swift and horrible retribution; that letting the old cat die causes death in the family; that to kill a toad makes the cow give bloody milk; that horsehairs in water turn to snakes in nine days; that spitting on the bait pleases the fish, and that to draw a circle in the dust around a marble charms it against being hit. What tradition, ancient and honorable in Boyville, declares is true, that is the Law everlasting, and no wise mans word shall change the law one jot nor one tittle. For in the beginning it was written, to get in the night wood, to eat with a fork at table, to wear shoes on Sunday, to say "sir" to company, and "thank you" to the lady, to go to bed at nine to remember that there are others who like gravy, to stay out of the water in dog days, to come right straight home from school, to shinny on your own side, and to clean those feet for Heaven's sake,--that is the whole duty of boys. As it was in the beginning, so it shall be ever after.

Now most of us grown-ups do not admit these things, and not being able to speak the language of the people whose rights we are seeking to destroy, we will never know how utterly futile are our conspiracies. But that is immaterial.

The main point that the gentle reader should bear in mind is this: The town of Boyville is free and independent; governed only by the ancient laws, made by the boys of the elder days--by the boys who found bottom in the rivers that flowed out of Eden; by little Seth, little Enoch, little Methuselah, and little Noah; by the boys who threw mud balls from willow withes broken from trees whereon David hung his harp a thousand years thereafter. For Boyville was old when Nineveh was a frontier post.

Boyville hears from afar the buzz about principalities and powers, the clatter of javelins and the clash of arms, the hubbub of the "Pride and pomp and circumstance of glorious war." The courtiers of Boyville cheer for each new hero, and claim fellowship with all "like gentlemen unafraid." But the Free Town has its own sovereign, makes its own idols. And the clatter and clash and hubbub that attend the triumphs of the kingdoms of the earth pass by unconquered Boyville as the shadow of a dream.

THE MARTYRDOM OF "MEALY" JONES

A WAIL IN B MINOR

Oh, what has become of the ornery boy, Who used to chew slip'ry elm, "rosum" and wheat: And say "jest a coddin'" and "what d'ye soy;" And wear rolled-up trousers all out at the seat?

And where is the boy who had shows in the barn, And "skinned a cat backards" and turned "summersets;" The boy who had faith in a snake-feeder yarn, And always smoked grape vine and corn cigarettes?

Where now is the small boy who spat on his bait, And proudly stood down near the foot of the class, And always went "barefooted" early and late, And washed his feet nights on the dew of the grass?

Where is the boy who could swim on his back, And dive and tread water and lay his hair, too; The boy who would jump off the spring-board ker-whack, And light on his stomach as I used to do?

Oh where and oh where is the old-fashioned boy? Has the old-fashioned boy with his old-fashioned ways, Been crowded aside by the Lord Fauntleroy,-- The cheap tinselled make-believe, full of alloy Without the pure gold of the rollicking joy Of the old-fashioned boy in the old-fashioned days?

His mother named him Harold, and named him better than she knew. He was just such a boy as one would expect to see bearing a heroic name. He had big, faded blue eyes, a nubbin of a chin, wide, wondering ears, and freckles--such brown blotches of freckles on his face and neck and hands, such a milky way of them across the bridge of his snub nose, that the boys called him "Mealy." And Mealy Jones it was to the end. When his parents called him Harold in the hearing of his playmates, the boy was ashamed, for he felt that a nickname gave him equal standing among his fellows. There were times in his life--when he was alone, recounting his valorous deeds--that Mealy more than half persuaded himself that he was a real boy. But when he was with Winfield Pennington, surnamed "Piggy" in the court of Boyville, and Abraham Lincoln Carpenter, similarly knighted "Old Abe," Mealy saw that he was only Harold, a weak and unsatisfactory imitation. He was handicapped in his struggle to be a natural boy by a mother who had been a "perfect little lady" in her girlhood and who was moulding her son in the forms that fashioned her. If it were the purpose of this tale to deal in philosophy, it would be easy to digress and show that Mealy Jones was a study in heredity; that from his mother's side of the house he inherited wide, white, starched collars, and from his father's side, a burning desire to spit through his teeth. But this is only a simple tale, with no great problem in it, save that of a boy working out his salvation between a fiendish lust for suspenders with trousers and a long-termed incarceration in ruffled waists with despised white china buttons around his waist-band.

No one but Piggy ever knew how Mealy Jones learned to swim; and Harold's mother doesn't consider Piggy Pennington any one, for the Penningtons are Methodists and the Joneses are Baptists, and Very hard-shelled ones, too. However, Mealy Jones did learn to swim "dog-fashion" years and years after the others had become post-graduates in aquatic lore and could "tread water," "swim sailor-fashion," and "lay" their hair. Mrs. Jones permitted her son to go swimming occasionally, but she always exacted from him a solemn promise not to go into the deep water. And Harold, who was a good little boy, made it a point not to "let down" when he was beyond the "step-off." So of course he could not know how deep it was; although the bad little boys who "brought up bottom" had told him that it was twelve feet deep.

One hot June afternoon Mealy stood looking at a druggist's display window, gazing idly at the pills, absently picking out the various kinds which he had taken. He had just come from his mother with the expressed injunction not to go near the river. His eyes roamed listlessly from the pills to the pain-killer, and; turning wearily away, he saw Piggy and Old Abe and Jimmy Sears. The three boys were scuffling for, the possession of a piece of rope. Pausing a moment in front of the grocery store, they beckoned for Mealy. The lad joined the group. Some one said,--

"Come on, Mealy, and go swimmin'."

"Aw, Mealy can't go," put in Jimmy; "his ma won't let him."

"Then come on," said Piggy Pennington. "You don't dast. My ma don't care how often I go in--only in dog days."

After some desultory debate they started--the four boys--pushing one another off the sidewalk, "rooster-fighting," shouting, laughing, racing through the streets. Mealy Jones longed to have the other boys observe his savage behavior. He knew, however, that he was not of them, that he was a sad make-believe. The guilt of the deed he was doing, oppressed him. He wondered how he could go into crime so stolidly. Inwardly he quaked as he recalled the stories he had read of boys who had drowned while disobeying their parents. His uneasiness was increased by the ever-present sense that he could not cope with the other boys at their sports. He let them jostle him, and often would run, after his self-respect would goad him to jostle back. Mealy was glad when the group came to the deep shade of the woods and walked slowly.

It was three o'clock when the boys reached the swimming-hole. There the great elm-tree, with its ladder of exposed roots, stretched over the water. Piggy Pennington, stripped to the skin, ran whooping down the sloping bank, splashed over the gravel at the water's edge, and plunged into the deepest water. Old Abe followed cautiously, bathing his temples and his wrists before sousing all over. Jimmy Sears threw his shirt high up on the bank as he stood ankle-deep in the stream. Piggy's exhilaration having worn off by this time, he picked up a mussel-shell and threw it at Jimmy's feet. The water dashed wide of its mark and sprinkled Mealy, who was sitting on a log, taking off his shoes.

"Here, Piggy, you quit that," said Mealy.

Jimmy said nothing. He sprang into the air head foremost toward Piggy, who dived from sight. His pursuer saw the direction Piggy took and followed him. The boys were a few feet apart when Jimmy came to the surface, puffing and spouting and shaking the water from his eyes and hair. He hesitated in his pursuit. Piggy observed the hesitation, and with a quick overhand movement shot a stinging stream of water from the ball of his hand into his antagonist's face. Then Piggy turned on his side and swam swiftly to shallow water, where he stood and splashed his victim, who was lumbering toward shore with his eyes shut, panting loudly. With every splash Piggy said, "How's that, Jim?" or "Take a bite o' this," or "Want a drink?" When Jimmy got where he could walk on the creek bottom, he made a feint of fighting back, but he soon ceased, and stood by, gasping for breath, before saying, "Let's quit."

Then followed the fun of ducking, the scuffling and the capers of the young human animals at play--at play even as gods in the elder days. Mealy saw it all through envious eyes and with a pricking conscience, as he doggedly fumbled the myriad buttons which his mother had fastened upon his pretty clothes. He heard Piggy dare Abe across the creek, and call him a cowardly calf, and say, "Any one't 'ull take a dare'll steal sheep." Mealy saw Jimmy grin as he cracked rocks under water while the other boys were diving, and watched Old Abe, as he made the waves rise under his chin, swimming after the fleeing culprit. He saw Abe catch Jimmy and hold his head under water until Mealy's smile faded to a horrified grin. Then he saw the victim and the victor come merrily to the shallows, laughing as though nothing unusual had occurred. It was high revel in Boyville, and the satyrs were in the midst of their joy.

Then Mealy heard Piggy say, "Aw, come in, Mealy; it won't hurt you."

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