Here is a humorous take on goody-goody doers by one of the greatest writers of USA -- :-)
The Story Of The
Good Little Boy
by Mark Twain
[Written about 1865]
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; and he always learned
his book, and never was late at Sabbath- school. He would not play hookey, even
when his sober judgment told him it was the most profitable thing he could do.
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. The curious ways that that Jacob had, surpassed everything. He
wouldn't play marbles on Sunday, he wouldn't rob birds' nests, he wouldn't give
hot pennies to organ-grinders' monkeys; he didn't seem to take any interest in
any kind of rational amusement. So the other boys used to try to reason it out
and come to an understanding of him, but they couldn't arrive at any
satisfactory conclusion. As I said before, they could only figure out a sort of
vague idea that he was "afflicted," and 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 had every confidence in them. He longed 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, because he wanted to travel thousands of miles
and gaze on him; but it wasn't any use; that good little boy always died in the
last chapter, and there was 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, and everybody crying into
handkerchiefs that had as much as a yard and a half of stuff in them. He was
always headed off in this way. He never could see one of those good little boys
on account of his always dying in the last chapter.
Jacob had a noble
ambition to be put in a Sunday school book. He wanted to be put in, with pictures
representing him gloriously 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, and telling her to spend it
freely, but not to be extravagant, because extravagance is a sin; and pictures
of him magnanimously refusing to tell on the bad boy who always lay in wait for
him around the corner as he came from school, and welted him so over the head
with a lath, and then chased him home, saying, "Hi! hi!" as he
proceeded. That was the ambition of young Jacob Blivens. He wished to be put in
a Sunday-school book. It made him feel a lithe uncomfortable sometimes when he
reflected that the good little boys always died. He loved to live, you know,
and this was the most unpleasant feature about being a Sunday-school-boo boy.
He knew it was not healthy to be good. He knew it was more fatal than
consumption to be so supernaturally good as the boys in the books were he knew
that none of them had ever been able to stand it long, and it pained him to
think 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. It couldn't be much of a Sunday-school
book that couldn't tell about the advice he gave to the community when he was
dying. 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
and have his dying speech all ready when his time came.
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; but in his case there was a
screw loose somewhere, and 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 and
receive his blessing, the blind man did not give him any blessing at all, but
whacked him over the head with his stick and said he would like to catch him
shoving him again, and then pretending to help him up. This was not in
accordance with any of the books. Jacob looked them all over to see.
One thing that Jacob
wanted to do was to find a lame dog that hadn't any place to stay, and was
hungry and persecuted, and bring him home and pet him and have that dog's imperishable
gratitude. And at last he found one and was happy; and he brought him home and
fed him, but when he was going to pet him the dog flew at him and tore all the
clothes off him except those that were in front, and made a spectacle of him
that was astonishing. He examined authorities, but he could not understand the
matter. It was of the same breed of dogs that was in the books, but it acted
very differently. Whatever this boy did he got into trouble. The very things
the boys in the books got rewarded for turned out to be about the most
unprofitable things he could invest in.
Once, when he was on
his way to Sunday-school, he saw some bad boys starting off pleasuring in a
sailboat. He was filled with consternation, because he knew from his reading that
boys who went sailing on Sunday invariably got drowned. So he ran out on a raft
to warn them, but a log turned with him and slid him into the river. A man got
him out pretty soon, and the doctor pumped the water out of him, and gave him a
fresh start with his bellows, but he caught cold and lay sick abed nine weeks.
But the most unaccountable thing about it was that the bad boys in the boat had
a good time all day, and then reached home alive and well in the most
surprising manner. Jacob Blivens said there was nothing like these things in
the books. He was perfectly dumfounded.
When he got well he
was a little discouraged, but he resolved to keep on trying anyhow. He knew
that so far his experiences wouldn't do to go in a book, but he hadn't yet
reached the allotted term of life for good little boys, and he hoped to be able
to make a record yet if he could hold on till his time was fully up. If
everything else failed he had his dying speech to fall back on.
He examined his
authorities, and found that it was now time for him to go to sea as a
cabin-boy. He called on a ship-captain and made his application, and when the
captain asked for his recommendations he proudly drew out a tract and pointed
to the word, "To Jacob Blivens, from his affectionate teacher." But
the captain was a coarse, vulgar man, and he said, "Oh, that be blowed!
that wasn't any proof that he knew how to wash dishes or handle a slush-bucket,
and he guessed he didn't want him." This was altogether 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 of honor and profit in their
gift it never had in any book that ever he had read. He could hardly believe
his senses.
This boy always had a
hard time of it. Nothing ever came out according to the authorities with him.
At last, one day, when he was around hunting up bad little boys to admonish, 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, and were
going to ornament with empty nitroglycerin cans made fast to their tails.
Jacob's heart was touched. He sat down on one of those cans (for he never
minded grease when duty was before him), and he took hold of the foremost dog
by the collar, and turned his reproving 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
stately little Sunday-school-book speeches which always commence with "Oh,
sir!" in dead opposition to the fact that no boy, good or bad, ever starts
a remark with "Oh, sir." But the alderman never waited to hear the
rest. He took Jacob Blivens by the ear and turned him around, and hit him a
whack in the rear with the flat of his hand; and 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 alderman or that old iron-foundry left on the face of the
earth; and, as for young Jacob Blivens, he never got a chance to make his last
dying speech after all his trouble fixing it up, unless he made it to the
birds; because, although the bulk of him came down all right in a tree-top in
an adjoining county, the rest of him was apportioned around among four
townships, and 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.--[This
glycerin catastrophe is borrowed from a floating newspaper item, whose author's
name I would give if I knew it.--M. T.]
Thus perished the good
little boy who did the best he could, but didn't come out 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 accounted for.
