The Court of Boyville

Excerpt

THE MARTYRDOM OF "MEALY" JONES

A WAIL IN B MINOR

Oh, what has become of the ornery boy,

Who used to chew slip'ry elm, "rosum" and wheat:

And say "jest a coddin'" and "what d'ye soy;"

And wear rolled-up trousers all out at the seat?

And where is the boy who had shows in the barn,

And "skinned a cat backards" and turned "summersets;"

The boy who had faith in a snake-feeder yarn,

And always smoked grape vine and corn cigarettes?

Where now is the small boy who spat on his bait,

And proudly stood down near the foot of the class,

And always went "barefooted" early and late,

And washed his feet nights on the dew of the grass?

Where is the boy who could swim on his back,

And dive and tread water and lay his hair, too;

The boy who would jump off the spring-board ker-whack,

And light on his stomach as I used to do?

Oh where and oh where is the old-fashioned boy?

Has the old-fashioned boy with his old-fashioned ways,

Been crowded aside by the Lord Fauntleroy,—

The cheap tinselled make-believe, full of alloy

Without the pure gold of the rollicking joy

Of the old-fashioned boy in the old-fashioned days?

:

His mother named him Harold, and named him better than she knew. He was just such a boy as one would expect to see bearing a heroic name. He had big, faded blue eyes, a nubbin of a chin, wide, wondering ears, and freckles—such brown blotches of freckles on his face and neck and hands, such a milky way of them across the bridge of his snub nose, that the boys called him "Mealy." And Mealy Jones it was to the end. When his parents called him Harold in the hearing of his playmates, the boy was ashamed, for he felt that a nickname gave him equal standing among his fellows. There were times in his life—when he was alone, recounting his valorous deeds—that Mealy more than half persuaded himself that he was a real boy. But when he was with Winfield Pennington, surnamed "Piggy" in the court of Boyville, and Abraham Lincoln Carpenter, similarly knighted "Old Abe," Mealy saw that he was only Harold, a weak and unsatisfactory imitation. He was handicapped in his struggle to be a natural boy by a mother who had been a "perfect little lady" in her girlhood and who was moulding her son in the forms that fashioned her. If it were the purpose of this tale to deal in philosophy, it would be easy to digress and show that Mealy Jones was a study in heredity; that from his mother's side of the house he inherited wide, white, starched collars, and from his father's side, a burning desire to spit through his teeth. But this is only a simple tale, with no great problem in it, save that of a boy working out his salvation between a fiendish lust for suspenders with trousers and a long-termed incarceration in ruffled waists with despised white china buttons around his waist-band.

No one but Piggy ever knew how Mealy Jones learned to swim; and Harold's mother doesn't consider Piggy Pennington any one, for the Penningtons are Methodists and the Joneses are Baptists, and Very hard-shelled ones, too. However, Mealy Jones did learn to swim "dog-fashion" years and years after the others had become post-graduates in aquatic lore and could "tread water," "swim sailor-fashion," and "lay" their hair. Mrs. Jones permitted her son to go swimming occasionally, but she always exacted from him a solemn promise not to go into the deep water. And Harold, who was a good little boy, made it a point not to "let down" when he was beyond the "step-off." So of course he could not know how deep it was; although the bad little boys who "brought up bottom" had told him that it was twelve feet deep.

One hot June afternoon Mealy stood looking at a druggist's display window, gazing idly at the pills, absently picking out the various kinds which he had taken. He had just come from his mother with the expressed injunction not to go near the river. His eyes roamed listlessly from the pills to the pain-killer, and; turning wearily away, he saw Piggy and Old Abe and Jimmy Sears. The three boys were scuffling for, the possession of a piece of rope....