The Story of a Bad Boy | Page 4

out "Pepper!" some
day in court? Fred Langdon is in California, in the native-wine
business-he used to make the best licorice-water I ever tasted! Binny
Wallace sleeps in the Old South Burying-Ground; and Jack Harris, too,
is dead-Harris, who commanded us boys, of old, in the famous
snow-ball battles of Slatter's Hill. Was it yesterday I saw him at the
head of his regiment on its way to join the shattered Army of the
Potomac? Not yesterday, but six years ago. It was at the battle of the
Seven Pines. Gallant Jack Harris, that never drew rein until he had
dashed into the Rebel battery! So they found him-lying across the
enemy's guns.
How we have parted, and wandered, and married, and died! I wonder
what has become of all the boys who went to the Temple Grammar
School at Rivermouth when I was a youngster? "All, all are gone, the
old familiar faces!"
It is with no ungentle hand I summon them back, for a moment, from
that Past which has closed upon them and upon me. How pleasantly
they live again in my memory! Happy, magical Past, in whose fairy
atmosphere even Conway, mine ancient foe, stands forth transfigured,
with a sort of dreamy glory encircling his bright red hair!
With the old school formula I commence these sketches of my boyhood.

My name is Tom Bailey; what is yours, gentle reader? I take for
granted it is neither Wiggins nor Spriggins, and that we shall get on
famously together, and be capital friends forever.
Chapter Two
In Which I Entertain Peculiar Views

I was born at Rivermouth, but, before I had a chance to become very
well acquainted with that pretty New England town, my parents
removed to New Orleans, where my father invested his money so
securely in the banking business that be was never able to get any of it
out again. But of this hereafter.
I was only eighteen months old at the time of the removal, and it didn't
make much difference to me where I was, because I was so small; but
several years later, when my father proposed to take me North to be
educated, I had my own peculiar views on the subject. I instantly
kicked over the little Negro boy who happened to be standing by me at
the moment, and, stamping my foot violently on the floor of the piazza,
declared that I would not be taken away to live among a lot of
Yankees!
You see I was what is called "a Northern man with Southern
principles." I had no recollection of New England: my earliest
memories were connected with the South, with Aunt Chloe, my old
Negro nurse, and with the great ill-kept garden in the centre of which
stood our house-a whitewashed stone house it was, with wide
verandas-shut out from the street by lines of orange, fig, and magnolia
trees. I knew I was born at the North, but hoped nobody would find it
out. I looked upon the misfortune as something so shrouded by time
and distance that maybe nobody remembered it. I never told my
schoolmates I was a Yankee, because they talked about the Yankees in
such a scornful way it made me feel that it was quite a disgrace not to
be born in Louisiana, or at least in one of the Border States. And this
impression was strengthened by Aunt Chloe, who said, "dar wasn't no

gentl'men in the Norf no way," and on one occasion terrified me
beyond measure by declaring that, "if any of dem mean whites tried to
git her away from marster, she was jes'gwine to knock 'em on de head
wid a gourd!"
The way this poor creature's eyes flashed, and the tragic air with which
she struck at an imaginary "mean white," are among the most vivid
things in my memory of those days.
To be frank, my idea of the North was about as accurate as that
entertained by the well-educated Englishmen of the present day
concerning America. I supposed the inhabitants were divided into two
classes-Indians and white people; that the Indians occasionally dashed
down on New York, and scalped any woman or child (giving the
preference to children) whom they caught lingering in the outskirts
after nightfall; that the white men were either hunters or schoolmasters,
and that it was winter pretty much all the year round. The prevailing
style of architecture I took to be log-cabins.
With this delightful picture of Northern civilization in my eye, the
reader will easily understand my terror at the bare thought of being
transported to Rivermouth to school, and possibly will forgive me for
kicking over little black Sam, and otherwise misconducting myself,
when my father announced his determination to me. As for kicking