And what is the final upshot of it all? The boy falls
dead, with a large unsightly gap in the middle of him. Probably,
too, he was a boy whose parents were raising him for their own
purposes. As it is, all gnawed up in this fashion and deceased
besides, he loses his attractions for everyone except the undertaker.
The fox presumably has an attack of acute indigestion. And there
you are! Compare the moral of this with the moral of any one of
the Old Cap Collier series, where virtue comes into its own and
sanity is prevalent throughout and vice gets what it deserves, and
all.
In McGuffey's Third Reader, I think it was, occurred that story
about the small boy who lived in Holland among the dikes and dams,
and one evening he went across the country to carry a few illustrated
post cards or some equally suitable gift to a poor blind man, and
on his way back home in the twilight he discovered a leak in the
sea wall. If he went for help the breach might widen while he was
gone and the whole structure give way, and then the sea would come
roaring in, carrying death and destruction and windmills and wooden
shoes and pineapple cheeses on its crest. At least, this is the
inference one gathers from reading Mr. McGuffey's account of the
affair.
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