, and was finally
expelled in disgrace. If he had been deceitful or selfish, he would
probably have escaped oftener than he did; but he never denied his
faults or told tales of others. We who knew him generally found him
good-natured and jovial; he looked upon himself as a far more desperate
character than we ourselves did, and once I remember he solemnly charged
me to take warning by his evil fate.

Still, you see, Sam sinned once too often. Even though his crimes were
never more serious than putting guinea-pigs into the master's desk, yet
that sort of conduct time after time is not to be tolerated in any
school. The example set by a mischievous boy to his fellows is not
good; and if his scrapes are winked at always, the time will come when
others will be encouraged to follow in his steps, and behave badly too.
Sam, no doubt, deserved the punishment he got; and because one bad boy
who is punished is no worse than a dozen bad boys who get off, that does
not make him out a good boy, or a boy more hardly treated than he
merited.

Scapegraces are boys who, being mischievously inclined, are constantly
transgressing the line between right and wrong. Up to a certain point,
a boy of good spirits and fond of his joke, is as jolly a boy as one
could desire; but when his good spirits break the bounds of order, and
his jokes interfere with necessary authority, then it is time for him to
be reminded nothing ought to be carried too far in this world.

One last word about scapegraces. Don't, like Sam, get it into your
heads that you are destined to get into scrapes, and that therefore it
is no use trying to keep out of them. That would be a proof of nothing
but your silliness. I can't tell you how it was Sam's stone always
broke the window, or why the master's eye always fell on him when there
was a row going on; but I can tell you this, that if Sam hadn't thrown
the stone, the window would not have been broken; and that if he had
behaved well when the master's eye was turned away, he would not have
cut a poor figure when the door was opened. Some boys make a boast of
the number of scrapes they have been in, and fondly imagine themselves
heroes in proportion to the number of times they have been flogged.
Well, if it pleases them to think so, by all means let them indulge the
fancy; but we can at least promise them this--nobody else thinks so!

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

THE UNORIGINAL BOY.

It takes one a long time to dis