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- 5414
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 5355
- text
- why, in a plebeian way, a perfect Chesterfield; very intelligent,
too--quick as a flash. But, such suavity! 'Please sir! please sir!'
always bowing and saying, 'Please sir.' In the strangest way, too,
combining a filial affection with a menial respect. Took such warm,
singular interest in my affairs. Wanted to be considered one of the
family--sort of adopted son of mine, I suppose. Of a morning, when I
would go out to my stable, with what childlike good nature he would trot
out my nag, 'Please sir, I think he's getting fatter and fatter.' 'But,
he don't look very clean, does he?' unwilling to be downright harsh with
so affectionate a lad; 'and he seems a little hollow inside the haunch
there, don't he? or no, perhaps I don't see plain this morning.' 'Oh,
please sir, it's just there I think he's gaining so, please.' Polite
scamp! I soon found he never gave that wretched nag his oats of nights;
didn't bed him either. Was above that sort of chambermaid work. No end
to his willful neglects. But the more he abused my service, the more
polite he grew."
"Oh, sir, some way you mistook him."
"Not a bit of it. Besides, sir, he was a boy who under a Chesterfieldian
exterior hid strong destructive propensities. He cut up my horse-blanket
for the bits of leather, for hinges to his chest. Denied it point-blank.
After he was gone, found the shreds under his mattress. Would
slyly break his hoe-handle, too, on purpose to get rid of hoeing.
Then be so gracefully penitent for his fatal excess of industrious
strength. Offer to mend all by taking a nice stroll to the nighest
settlement--cherry-trees in full bearing all the way--to get the broken
thing cobbled. Very politely stole my pears, odd pennies, shillings,
dollars, and nuts; regular squirrel at it. But I could prove nothing.
Expressed to him my suspicions. Said I, moderately enough, 'A little
less politeness, and a little more honesty would suit me better.' He
fired up; threatened to sue for libel. I won't say anything about his
afterwards, in Ohio, being found in the act of gracefully putting a bar
across a rail-road track, for the reason that a stoker called him the
rogue that he was. But enough: polite boys or saucy boys, white boys or
black boys, smart boys or lazy boys, Caucasian boys or Mongol boys--all
are rascals."
"Shocking, shocking!" nervously tucking his frayed cravat-end out of
sight. "Surely, respected sir, you labor under a deplorable
hallucination. Why, pardon again, you seem to have not the slightest
confidence in boys, I admit, indeed, that boys, some of them at least,
are but too prone to one little foolish foible or other. But, what then,
respected sir, when, by natural laws, they finally outgrow such things,
and wholly?"
Having until now vented himself mostly in plaintive dissent of canine
whines and groans, the man with the brass-plate seemed beginning to
summon courage to a less timid encounter. But, upon his maiden essay,
was not very encouragingly handled, since the dialogue immediately
continued as follows:
"Boys outgrow what is amiss in them? From bad boys spring good men? Sir,
'the child is father of the man;' hence, as all boys are rascals, so are
all men. But, God bless me, you must know these things better than I;
keeping an intelligence office as you do; a business which must furnish
peculiar facilities for studying mankind. Come, come up here, sir;
confess you know these things pretty well, after all. Do you not know
that all men are rascals, and all boys, too?"
- title
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