DIDN'T WANT TO BE GOOD.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 628, 17 February 1879, Page 2

DIDN'T WANT TO BE GOOD.

A brisk fight between two boys at the foot of Griswold street yesterday was interrupted by a citizen, who after releasing one of them, made the other sit down on a salt barrel and be talked to. ' Now, then,' he began, 'it is a terrible thing for a boy like you to be conducting m this manner. ' 'I'd a licked him if you had'nt come up !' wailed the boy as he carefully wiped his scratched nose.' Suppose you had. Do you want to be considered a dog 1 Why don't you try and be a good boy, and get along peacefully with everybody 1 Suppose you had rolled off the wharf and got drowned? 'Spose'n I hadn't, too 1 It's the good boys who get drowned' * What V ' It's so and I kin prove it. I'll bet a dollar agin a cent that more Sunday-school boys have been drowned this year than bad uns 1' The man reflected and did not dispute the assertion. And more run over by the cars,' continued the boy. No answer again. ' And more of 'em got sick and died ; and I'll bet I've got more money and have more fun and peanuts then any good boy m Detroit. ' 'But tlie good are rewarded,' quietly observed the man. 'So are the bad,' replied the boy. ' I'll bet I make 50 cents before dark ?' ' But the good are respected.' 'So am I. I kin go up to the post-office and borrow three dollars 'thout any security, and I'll bet ten to tive you can't. Come now, put up the lucre 1' 'My boy,' sadly observed the man, ' you must think of the future. Don't you want to be looked up to and respected when you are a man '?' ' That's too fur ahead,' was the lonesome reply. "If anybody thinks I'm going to be called a clothes-pin and a wheelbarrow and a hairbrush by all the boys, and not go for 'em, jist for the sak of lookin' like an angel when I git to be a man, they is mistaken m the house, and you dasn't bet they ain't.' And he 'dasn't.'