WHY HE WAS WHIPPED.
He was seven years old, lived in Cheyenne, and his name was
Tommy. Moreover he was going to school for the first time in his
life. Out here little people are not allowed to attend school
when they are five or six, for the Law says: "Children under
seven must not go to school."
But now Tommy was seven and had been to school two weeks, and
such delightful weeks! Every day mamma listened to long accounts
of how "me and Dick Ray played marbles," and "us fellers cracked
the whip." There was another thing that he used to tell mamma
about, something that in those first days he always spoke of in
the most subdued tones, and that--I am sorry to record it of any
school, much more a Cheyenne school--was the numerous whippings
that were administered to various little boys and girls. There
was something painfully fascinating about those whippings to
restless, mischievous little Tommy who had never learned the art
of sitting still. He knew his turn might come at any moment and
one night he cried out in his sleep: "Oh, dear, what will become
of me if I get whipped!" But as the days passed on and this
possible retribution overtook him not, his fears gradually
forsook him, and instead of speaking pitifully of "those poor
little children who were whipped," he mentioned them in a causal
off-hand manner as, "those cry-babies, you know?" One afternoon
mamma saw him sitting on the porch, slapping his little fat hand
with a strap. "Tommy, child, what in the world are you doing?"
she asked.
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