Left-Handed Billy
By [Samuel Griswold Goodrich (?)]
Annotations by Maggie Kelly
There was once a boy whose name was William: but they used to call him Billy. He was a good-natured fellow, yet he had one fault—he chose to have his own way, and was never careful to mind his parents. [1]
Now Bill did not intend to be disobedient: but he was careless; he did not lay up good advice in his mind, and act according to it; but he usually forgot it, and pursued his own inclination. I will tell you an instance of this.
Billy had made himself a little garden, and he had planted in it a good many seeds. After a few days, the seeds came up, and the boy was greatly delighted at seeing them peep out of the ground. He could hardly keep away from his garden, so fond was he of seeing his budding flowers and plants.
You must know, that the garden was by the road-side, and in the road were a number of pigs. These were always prowling about, and if the gate was left open, they were sure to walk in and do some mischief. They had already got into the garden several times, and rooted up the peas, beans, and cabbages.
Now Billy was very apt to leave this gate open. He could not be made to feel the necessity of keeping it always shut. His mother told him, again and again, to be more careful; but the command went in at one ear, and out at the other.
Well, one day Billy had been to see his little garden, and then he set out to go to school. As usual, he left the gate open, and in walked a couple of pigs. They soon came to his beds of flowers and plants. They poked their long noses into the mellow earth, and in a few minutes the pretty garden was a heap of ruins.
When Bill came home from school, he saw the mischief that had been done.
He fretted a good deal and laid it all to the naughty pigs. His mother told him that he had only himself to blame; that the accident arose entirely from his careless habit of leaving the gate open.
After grumbling two or three days, Bill went to work and again planted his little garden. In a week the seeds began to shoot up from the soil, and once more Bill was full of joy. But, after a few days, he again forgot to shut the gate, and again the pigs marched in and rooted the beds all to pieces.
This incident will enable my reader to see what a heedless fellow Bill was. He did not intend to do wrong, but he was careless; he thought more of his play than his duty. Thus he adopted the habit of being careless, and we shall see how he suffered by it.
I must now tell you that Bill was naturally left-handed. [2] By this I mean, that he was more apt to use his left hand than his right. If he took a knife to cut with, or a pen to write anything, he took it in his left hand. His mother used great care to break him of this fault, but still careless Bill kept on using his left hand instead of his right.
Thus he adopted the habit of being left-handed, and he never got over it. This made him appear very awkward, and was a great trouble to him as long as he lived. Nor was this the only evil that flowed from his heedlessness: he grew up careless and awkward in everything. I must tell you one curious instance of this.
One day he went up into a tree which stood before his father’s house, to saw off a large branch. Well, he got upon the branch, took the saw in his left hand and went to work. But alas! the poor fellow got upon the wrong part of the limb, and, when it fell, Left-handed Bill fell with it. He had sawed himself down!
The boy was sadly bruised, and his mother told him she hoped it would teach him the folly of being so careless. But bad habits, once adopted and confirmed, are hard to cure, and Bill went on as heedless as before.
Thus he grew up, and, when he was a man, he received the title of Left-handed Billy. If he drove a team of cattle, he was sure to be on the wrong side, as you see him in the picture at the head of this article. [3] He never succeeded in anything, but became what is called an unlucky fellow. [4] The people used to say, if there was a wrong side, Bill was sure to take it. Such were the evils of growing up in habits of carelessness.
Goodrich, Samuel Griswold. “Left-handed billy.” ROBERT MERRY’S MUSEUM , December 1850.
[1] This story appeared in the December 1850 edition of Robert Merry’s Museum, a popular 19th century children’s magazine.
[2] See the Contexts section at the bottom of the page for a brief historical background of left-handedness.
[3] I have included the image mentioned here as it first appeared in Robert Merry’s Museum.
[4] Emphasis original throughout.
Contexts
It wasn’t until the mid-20th century that left-handedness began to be more widely accepted in the United States. Throughout history, left-handedness has been deemed evil, corrupt, backwards, and defective by a number of cultures; for these reasons, it was a common practice for centuries to discourage left-handedness. The reasons for these unsavory sentiments about left-handedness vary from religious ideologies about good and evil to practical, tactile reasons, such as the difficulty that using the left hand presented for Medieval European scribes (which often resulted in smeared ink, an expensive mistake).
This story displays the popular sentiment that being left handed meant that you also had a number of undesirable character traits such as carelessness and laziness. “Left-Handed Billy” is an attempt to not only avoid being left-handed but to also avoid the negative habits that were associated with this physical trait.
For a longer history on left-handedness, check out these articles from HistoryExtra and TIME.
Resources for Further Study
- Check out Pat Pflieger’s website on 19th century children’s literature. Here’s the page dedicated to this particular story.
Contemporary Connections
Some famous lefties include: Leonardo Da Vinci, Lewis Carroll, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Helen Keller, Joan of Arc, Charlie Chaplin, Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Barack Obama, and Julia Roberts. For a list of 100 famous lefties, check out this article from The Guardian.
