: The Worst Boy in Town by Habberton John - Conduct of life Juvenile fiction; Fathers and sons Juvenile fiction; Farmers Juvenile fiction; Youth Conduct of life Juvenile fiction; Diligence Juvenile fiction; Success Juvenile fiction; Physicians Juvenile ficti

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CHAPTER

I--A NAUTICAL EXPEDITION

II--A CORNER IN WHISKEY

IV--SHARP AXES AND SHARPER WITS

V--EXPERIMENTS IN GRAVITATION

VI--THOUGHTS OF REFORM

X--YOUNG AMERICA IN POLITICS

A NAUTICAL EXPEDITION.

"You're the worst boy in town!"

The speaker was Farmer Parkins, and the person addressed was Jack Wittingham, only son of the most successful physician in Doveton. Farmer Parkins had driven to town quite early in the morning to make some necessary purchases, and he had been followed by his faithful yellow dog, Sam, who had been improving the opportunity to make some personal calls and tours of observation. One of these last-named recreations carried him near the back door of a butcher shop to which Jack had gone to deliver an order for his mother. Adjacent to the butcher's place of business was the shop of the village tinman, and behind this were strewn sundry kitchen utensils which had proved to be too badly damaged to be mended. Jack had noticed the dog when that animal first put in his appearance in search of a scrap of meat or bone, and had thereafter observed his motions with that peculiar interest which dogs seem always to inspire in boys. Then he happened to see a very dilapidated tea-kettle behind the tin-shop, and when dogs and tea-kettles become closely associated in the mind of a boy, even if the boy himself be of excellent birth and breeding, and quite tender-hearted beside, the juvenile traditions of many generations have generally the effect of causing the dog and the kettle to enter into an entangling alliance which the animal regards with accumulative aversion, and about which the tea-kettle, whose expressions are ordinarily so cheery, indulges in much unrythmical noise. Into such a combination were Farmer Parkins' yellow dog Sam and an old kettle forced very soon after Jack first beheld them both, and as yellow Sam hurried down street in an honest attempt to rid himself of his superfluous tin-ware, and as Jack followed him to note the results, with a view to the more accurate affixing of tin kettles to the tails of the dogs of the future, yellow Sam dropped exhausted in front of his master's horses, and the dog's master came out of a store near by, just as Jack, with a fragment of barrel-hoop, was trying to stimulate the animal to renewed exertion. It was then that the farmer remarked, with admirable vigor,

"You're the worst boy in town!"

Jack had heard this very expression so many times before that he was half inclined to believe it true, yet how it could be a fact was a something that bothered him greatly. He laughed when Farmer Parkins said it, and he replied also, by several facial contortions, which were as irritating as they were hideous; he stuck his hands into his pockets, and bravely tried an ingratiating smile or two upon such passers by as had overheard the farmer's remark, but as soon as he had reached an alley down which to disappear, Jack suddenly became a very chop-fallen, unhappy looking boy, and he murmured to himself,

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