Chimney sweeps -- Juvenile fiction; Fairy tales -- England
HERE I come to the very saddest part of all my story. I know some people
will only laugh at it, and call it much ado about nothing. But I know
one man who would not; and he was an officer with a pair of gray
moustaches as long as your arm, who said once in company that two of the
most heartrending sights in the world, which moved him most to tears,
which he would do anything to prevent or remedy, were a child over a
broken toy and a child stealing sweets.
The company did not laugh at him; his moustaches were too long and too
gray for that: but, after he was gone, they called him sentimental and
so forth, all but one dear little old Quaker lady with a soul as white
as her cap, who was not, of course, generally partial to soldiers; and
she said very quietly, like a Quaker:
"Friends, it is borne upon my mind that that is a truly brave man."
Now you may fancy that Tom was quite good, when he had everything that
he could want or wish: but you would be very much mistaken. Being quite
comfortable is a very good thing; but it does not make people good.
Indeed, it sometimes makes them naughty, as it made the people in the
Bible, who waxed fat and kicked, like horses overfed and underworked.
And I am very sorry to say that this happened to little Tom. For he grew
so fond of the sea-bullseyes and sea-lollipops that his foolish little
head could think of nothing else: and he was always longing for more,
and wondering when the strange lady would come again and give him some,
and what she would give him, and how much, and whether she would give
him more than the others. And he thought of nothing but lollipops by
day, and dreamt of nothing else by night--and what happened then?
That he began to watch the lady to see where she kept the sweet things:
and began hiding, and sneaking, and following her about, and pretending
to be looking the other way, or going after something else, till he
found out that she kept them in a beautiful mother-of-pearl cabinet away
in a deep crack of the rocks.
And he longed to go to the cabinet, and yet he was afraid; and then he
longed again, and was less afraid; and at last, by continual thinking
about it, he longed so violently that he was not afraid at all. And one
night, when all the other children were asleep, and he could not sleep
for thinking of lollipops, he crept away among the rocks, and got to the
cabinet, and behold! it was open.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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