Once there was a good little boy by the name of Jacob Blivens. He always obeyed his parents, no matter how absurd and unreasonable their demands were. He always learned his book. None of the other boys could ever make that boy out, he acted so strangely. He wouldn’t lie, no matter how convenient it was. He just said it was wrong to lie, and that was sufficient for him. And he was so honest that he was simply ridiculous.

He wouldn’t play marbles on Sunday. He wouldn’t rob birds’ nests. He didn’t seem to take any interest in any kind of rational amusement. The other boys tried to understand him, but they couldn’t. So they took him under their protection, and never allowed any harm to come to him.

This good little boy read all the Sunday-school books. They were his greatest delight. This was the whole secret of it. He believed in the gold little boys they put in the Sunday-school book. He wanted to come across one of them alive once; but he never did. They all died before his time, maybe. Whenever he read about a particularly good one, he turned over quickly to the end to see what became of him. He wanted to travel thousands of miles and see him; but that good little boy always died in the last chapter. There was always a picture of the funeral, with all his relations and the Sunday-school children standing around the grave in pantaloons that were too short, and bonnets that were too large.

Jacob had a noble ambition to be put in a Sunday school book. He wanted to be put in, with pictures representing him declining to lie to his mother, and her weeping for joy about it; and pictures representing him standing on the doorstep giving a penny to a poor beggar-woman with six children.

That was the ambition of young Jacob Blivens. He wished to be put in a Sunday-school book. It made him feel a little uncomfortable sometimes when he thought that the good little boys always died. He loved to live, you know.

He knew it was not healthy to be good. He knew it was not healthy to be so supernaturally good as the boys in the books were. He knew that none of them had ever been able to live long. It also disappointed him that if they put him in a book he wouldn’t ever see it, or even if they did get the book out before he died it wouldn’t be popular without any picture of his funeral in the back part of it. So at last, of course, he had to make up his mind to do the best he could under the circumstances – to live right, and hang on as long as he could.

But somehow nothing ever went right with the good little boy; nothing ever turned out with him the way it turned out with the good little boys in the books. They always had a good time, and the bad boys had the broken legs. In his case it all happened just the other way.

When he found Jim Blake stealing apples, and went under the tree to read to him about the bad little boy who fell out of a neighbor’s apple tree and broke his arm, Jim fell out of the tree, too, but he fell on him and broke his arm, and Jim wasn’t hurt at all. Jacob couldn’t understand that. There wasn’t anything in the books like it.

And once, when some bad boys pushed a blind man over in the mud, and Jacob ran to help him up, the blind man hit him on the head with his stick and said he would like to catch him pushing him again, and then pretending to help him up. This was not like in any of the books. Jacob looked them all over to see.

Later Jacob wanted to find a lame dog that hadn’t any place to stay and was hungry. He wanted to bring him home and pet him and have that dog’s gratitude. And at last he found one and was happy. He brought him home and fed him, but when he was going to pet him the dog started to bite and tore the clothes off him. He examined the books, but he could not understand what he had done wrong.

Once, when he was on his way to Sunday-school, he saw some bad boys starting off in a sailboat. He knew from his reading that boys who went sailing on Sunday got drowned. So he ran out on a raft to warn them, but a log turned with him and he fell into the river. A man got him out pretty soon, but he caught cold and stayed in bed for nine weeks. And the bad boys in the boat had a good time all day, and then reached home alive and well. Jacob Blivens said there was nothing like these things in the books.

When he got well he was a little discouraged, but he decided to keep on trying anyhow. He knew that so far his experiences wouldn’t do to go in a book. If everything else failed, he had his dying speech.

He found that it was now time for him to go to sea as a cabin boy. He went to a ship captain, and when the captain asked for his recommendations he proudly drew out a tract and pointed to the word, “To Jacob Blivens, from his teacher.” But the captain said that it wasn’t any proof that he knew how to wash dishes or handle a bucket, and he guessed he didn’t want him. This was 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. It never had in any book that he had ever read.

At last, one day, when he was around hunting up bad little boys, 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. They were going to ornament these dogs’ tails with empty nitroglycerin cans. Jacob’s heart was touched. He sat down on one of those cans, and he took hold of the first dog by the collar, and turned his 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 little Sunday-school-book speeches which always start with “Oh, sir!”. But the man never waited to hear the rest. He took Jacob Blivens by the ear and turned him around, and hit him in the rear[12] with his hand.

In an instant that good little boy shot out through the roof and soared away toward the sun with the fragments of those fifteen dogs stringing after him like the tail of a kite. And there wasn’t a sign of that man or that old iron-foundry left on the face of the earth. As for young Jacob Blivens, he never got a chance to make his last dying speech after all his trouble making it up, unless he made it to the birds. Although the most of him came down all right in a tree-top in an adjoining county, the rest of him was found in four different places. So they had to hold five inquests on him to find out whether he was dead or not, and how it occurred. You never saw a boy scattered so.

Thus perished the good little boy who did the best he could, but nothing ever happened to him according to the books. Every boy who ever did as he did prospered except him. His case is truly remarkable. It will probably never be remembered.

Once there was a bad little boy whose name was Jim, though, you may notice that bad little boys are nearly always called James in your Sunday-school books. It was strange, but still it was true, that this one was called Jim.

He didn’t have any sick mother. Most bad boys in the Sunday books are named James, and have sick mothers, who sing them to sleep with sweet voices, and then kiss them good night, and kneel down by the bedside and weep. But it was different with this fellow. He was named Jim, and there wasn’t anything the matter with his mother. She was rather stout than otherwise, and she was not anxious on Jim’s account. She said if he were to break his neck it wouldn’t be much loss. She always spanked Jim to sleep, and she never kissed him good night.

Once this little bad boy stole the key of the pantry, and slipped in there and ate some jam, and filled up the jar with tar, so that his mother would never notice. No terrible feeling came over him, and nothing \ whispered to him, “Is it right to disobey my mother? Isn’t it sinful to do this? Where do bad little boys go?” Then he didn’t kneel down all alone and promise never to be wicked any more, and go and tell his mother all about it, and ask for her forgiveness. No; that is the way with all other bad boys in the books; but it happened otherwise with this Jim, strangely enough. He ate that jam, and he put in the tar, and laughed. When his mother found it out, he denied knowing anything about it, and she whipped him severely. Everything about this boy was curious – everything turned out differently with him from the way it does to the bad Jameses in the books.