As the service proceeded, the clergyman drew such pictures of the graces, the winning ways, and the rare promise of the lost lads that every soul there, thinking he recognized these pictures, felt a pang in remembering that he had persistently blinded himself to them always before, and had as persistently seen only faults and flaws in the
poor boys. The minister related many a touching incident in the lives of the departed, too, which illustrated their sweet, generous natures, and the people could easily see, now, how noble and beautiful those episodes were, and remembered with grief that at the time they occurred they had seemed rank rascalities, well deserving of the cowhide.
Bless his dear heart, he's been doing it all his life--helping
poor boys, I mean, not getting rich, that he'll never be.
So simple were the
poor boy's words, and so deep his sorrow, that even Little John felt a certain knotty lump rise in his throat.
There was once upon a time a
poor boy who had neither father nor mother.
To my
poor boy, left doubly desolate, I have never been able to impart a sense of my presence.
"He knows the trick too well." But there are other supplications which voice a strange, hoarse, unaccustomed note, like that today when I took the
poor boy's paper.
One of them had to go home to try on a ball-dress; for it was just the dress and the ball which had caused her to be confirmed this time, for otherwise she would not have come; the other was a
poor boy, who had borrowed his coat and boots to be confirmed in from the innkeeper's son, and he was to give them back by a certain hour; the third said that he never went to a strange place if his parents were not with him--that he had always been a good boy hitherto, and would still be so now that he was confirmed, and that one ought not to laugh at him for it: the others, however, did make fun of him, after all.
When the old man does right the
poor boy after all, the
poor boy gets no good of it.
My
poor boy! What thousands of charming women there are who would ask nothing better than to be his wife!
He ought to have it - the
poor boy. But to give it to him would be like tampering with his position of complete dependence.
"Still, we must have consideration for this
poor boy, who is made of flesh and blood and bone, and gets tired," suggested the Scarecrow, in his usual thoughtful manner.
'A nice person to prefer a charge against a
poor boy!' said Fang, with a comical effort to look humane.