This text is part of:
[16]
General had observed his wonder and veneration, and was amused by it. Coming to a corner of the street, he turned round suddenly, touched his hat, and made a very low bow. This playful condescension so completely confused his juvenile admirer, that he stood blushing and bewildered for an instant, then walked hastily away, without remembering to return the salutation.
The tenderness of spirit often manifested by him, was very remarkable in such a resolute and mischievous boy. There was an old unoccupied barn in the neighborhood, a favorite resort of swallows in the Spring-time.
When he was about ten years old, he invited a number of boys to meet him the next Sunday morning, to go and pelt the swallows.
They set off on this expedition with anticipations of a fine frolic; but before they had gone far, Isaac began to feel a strong conviction that he was doing wrong.
He told his companions he thought it was very cruel sport to torment and kill poor little innocent birds; especially as they might destroy mothers, and then the little ones would be left to starve.
There was a Quaker meeting-house about a mile and a half distant, and he proposed that they should all go there, and leave the swallows in peace.
But the boys only laughed at him, and ran off shouting, ‘Come on!
Come on!’
He looked after them sorrowfully for some minutes, reproaching himself for the suffering he had caused the poor birds.
He
Boston, J. P. Jewett and Company; Cleveland, Ohio: Jewett, Proctor and Worthington; London; Low and Company, 1854.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.