Chapter Twenty-Two. Exeunt Omnes

The Story of a Bad Boy

by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

With the close of my school-days at Rivermouth this modest
chronicle ends.

The new life upon which I entered, the new friends and foes I
encountered on the road, and what I did and what I did not, are
matters that do not come within the scope of these pages. But before
I write Finis to the record as it stands, before I leave it-feeling
as if I were once more going away from my boyhood-I have a word or
two to say concerning a few of the personages who have figured in the
story, if you will allow me to call Gypsy a personage.

I am sure that the reader who has followed me thus far will be
willing to hear what became of her, and Sailor Ben and Miss Abigail
and the Captain.

First about Gypsy. A month after my departure from Rivemouth the
Captain informed me by letter that he had parted with the little
mare, according to agreement. She had been sold to the ring-master of
a travelling circus (I had stipulated on this disposal of her), and
was about to set out on her travels. She did not disappoint my
glowing anticipations, but became quite a celebrity in her way-by
dancing the polka to slow music on a pine-board ball-room constructed
for the purpose.

I chanced once, a long while afterwards, to be in a country town
where her troupe was giving exhibitions; I even read the gaudily
illumined show-bill, setting forth the accomplishments of Zuleika,
the famed Arabian Trick Pony-but I failed to recognize my dear little
Mustang girl behind those high-sounding titles, and so, alas, did not
attend the performance! I hope all the praises she received and all
the spangled trappings she wore did not spoil her; but I am afraid
they did, for she was always over much given to the vanities of this
world!

Miss Abigail regulated the domestic destinies of my
grandfather's household until the day of her death, which Dr.
Theophilus Tredick solemnly averred was hastened by the inveterate
habit she had contracted of swallowing unknown quantities of
hot-drops whenever she fancied herself out of sorts. Eighty-seven
empty phials were found in a bonnet-box on a shelf in her bedroom
closet.

The old house became very lonely when the family got reduced to
Captain Nutter and Kitty; and when Kitty passed away, my grandfather
divided his time between Rivermouth and New York.

Sailor Ben did not long survive his little Irish lass, as he
always fondly called her. At his demise, which took place about six
years since, he left his property in trust to the managers of a "Home
for Aged Mariners." In his will, which was a very whimsical
document-written by himself, and worded with much shrewdness, too-he
warned the Trustees that when he got "aloft" he intended to keep his
"weather eye" on them, and should send "a speritual shot across their
bows" and bring them to, if they didn't treat the Aged Mariners
handsomely.

He also expressed a wish to have his body stitched up in a
shotted hammock and dropped into the harbor; but as he did not
strenuously insist on this, and as it was not in accordance with my
grandfather's preconceived notions of Christian burial, the Admiral
was laid to rest beside Kitty, in the Old South Burying Ground, with
an anchor that would have delighted him neatly carved on his
headstone.

I am sorry the fire has gone out in the old ship's stove in that
sky-blue cottage at the head of the wharf; I am sorry they have taken
down the flag-staff and painted over the funny port-holes; for I
loved the old cabin as it was. They might have let it alone!

For several months after leaving Rivermouth I carried on a
voluminous correspondence with Pepper Whitcomb; but it gradually
dwindled down to a single letter a month, and then to none at all.
But while he remained at the Temple Grammar School he kept me advised
of the current gossip of the town and the doings of the
Centipedes.

As one by one the boys left the academy-Adams, Harris, Marden,
Blake, and Langdon-to seek their fortunes elsewhere, there was less
to interest me in the old seaport; and when Pepper himself went to
Philadelphia to read law, I had no one to give me an inkling of what
was going on.

There wasn't much to go on, to be sure. Great events no longer
considered it worth their while to honor so quiet a place.

One Fourth of July the Temple Grammar School burnt down-set on
fire, it was supposed, by an eccentric squib that was seen to bolt
into an upper window-and Mr. Grimshaw retired from public life,
married, "and lived happily ever after," as the story-books say.

The Widow Conway, I am able to state, did not succeed in
enslaving Mr. Meeks, the apothecary, who united himself clandestinely
to one of Miss Dorothy Gibbs's young ladies, and lost the patronage
of Primrose Hall in consequence.

Young Conway went into the grocery business with his ancient
chum, Rodgers-RODGERS & CONWAY! I read the sign only last summer
when I was down in Rivermouth, and had half a mind to pop into the
shop and shake hands with him, and ask him if he wanted to fight. I
contented myself, however, with flattening my nose against his dingy
shop-window, and beheld Conway, in red whiskers and blue overalls,
weighing out sugar for a customer-giving him short weight, I'll bet
anything!

I have reserved my pleasantest word for the last. It is touching
the Captain. The Captain is still hale and rosy, and if he doesn't
relate his exploit in the War of 1812 as spiritedly as he used to, he
makes up by relating it more frequently and telling it differently
every time! He passes his winters in New York and his summers in the
Nutter House, which threatens to prove a hard nut for the destructive
gentleman with the scythe and the hour-glass, for the seaward gable
has not yielded a clapboard to the eastwind these twenty years. The
Captain has now become the Oldest Inhabitant in Rivermouth, and so I
don't laugh at the Oldest Inhabitant any more, but pray in my heart
that he may occupy the post of honor for half a century to come!

So ends the Story of a Bad Boy-but not such a very bad boy, as I
told you to begin with.