Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories Part 24

"And if I am gooder, and gooder," he asked, "what will I be?"

"Oh, you will be a little angel."

"But I don't want to be an angel," he retorted; "I want to be an engine-driver." They are never else than frank in their statements. A mother who suffers from severe headaches, said to her little girl about eight, one day not long ago, "What would you do, Lottie dear, if your darling mother was taken away from you--if she died?" "Well, mother,"

was the little one's startling answer, "I suppose we would cry at first--then we would bury you, and then we would come home and take all the money out of your pocket." Now, while it is possible that something else might also be done, it is almost certain--yea, it is certain, without doubt--that all these ceremonials, however reluctantly, would, in turn, be duly performed.

From a story bearing on death to one relating to birth is a transition not so unnatural as may at the first blush appear. And births are affairs ever of prime interest to children. Not many years ago it happened in a village in Perthshire that twins arrived in a family, and next day one of the little misses of the house was out on the street playing, when a neighbouring lady came up to where she was, and, "So you've got two little babies at home, Bizzie," she remarked. "Yes,"

responded the little one, very solemnly; "and do you know, my father was away at Edinburgh when the doctor brought them. But it was a good thing my mother was in; for if she hadna, there would have been naebody in the house but me, and I wadna have kent what to do wi' them." They tell this delightful story of the little daughter of Professor Van d.y.k.e, of the Philadelphia University:--

"Papa, where were you born?"

"In Boston, my dear."

"Where was mamma born?"

"In San Francisco."

"And where was I born?"

"In Philadelphia."

"Well, pap, isn't it funny how we three people got together?"

And that now recalls another which Mrs. Keeley, the actress, tells of a tradesman's little boy who was often taken to stay with his grandmother and grandfather--the latter a very feeble old man, bald and toothless.

This little fellow was told that his father and mother had "bought" a nice new baby brother for him. The little man was much interested by the news, and was taken to see the new arrival. He looked at it with astonishment for a few seconds, then remarked--"Why, he's got no hair, father!" This was at once admitted. "And he's got no teeth," observed the boy again, touching another fact which could not be denied. Then a long and thoughtful pause ensued, after which the little critic (who had probably been comparing the baby with his grandfather), observed confidentially--"I'll tell you what, father; if they called him a new baby, they've taken you in--he's an old 'un!" You cannot easily get round children. And it is almost impossible to suppress them. As touching this fact an excellent story is told of our present King and his sister, the late Empress of Germany, when they were boy and girl.

Lord----, who had a deformed foot, was invited to Osborne; and before his arrival the Queen and Prince Albert debated whether it would be better to warn the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal of his physical calamity, so as to avoid embarra.s.sing remarks, or to leave the matter to their own good feeling. The latter course was adopted. Lord ---- duly arrived. The foot elicited no remark from the Royal children, and the visit pa.s.sed off with perfect success. But next day the Princess Royal asked the Queen, "Where is Lord----?" "He has gone back to London, dear." "Oh, what a pity! He had promised to show Berty and me his foot!"

The _enfants terrible_ had wilily caught his lordship in the corridor, and made their own terms.

There is pleasure in telling that story were it but for the revelation it affords of how the children of Kings and Queens are animated by the same curiosities, and may act at times so like the children of the commonality. That Royalty again may be moved by the action or word of a child of common birth we have many pleasing proofs. One is pat. A late King of Prussia, while visiting in one of the villages of his dominion, was welcomed by the school children. Their sponsor made a speech for them. The King thanked them. Then, taking an orange from a plate, he asked--"To what kingdom does this belong?" "The vegetable kingdom, sire," replied a little girl. The King next took a gold coin from his pocket, and, holding it up, asked--"And to what kingdom does this belong?" "To the mineral kingdom," was the reply. "And to what kingdom do I belong then?" asked the King. The little girl coloured deeply; for she did not like to say the "animal kingdom," as he thought she would, lest His Majesty should be offended. But just then it flashed upon her mind that "G.o.d made man in His own image," and looking up with brightening eye, she said--"To G.o.d's Kingdom, sire." The King was moved.

A tear stood in his eye. He placed his hand on the child's head, and said, most devoutly--"G.o.d grant that I may be accounted worthy of that Kingdom." Thus did the words of a common child, you see, move the heart of a King. But, oh, we are all the same. It is only the environment that is different. And the distinction there even is not so great as one, not knowing, may be disposed to imagine. In high and low life alike, anyway, the children, we know, are free; and all alike are susceptible of eccentricity. What a fine confession of this the Princess of Wales made not long ago when, as d.u.c.h.ess of York, she was addressing a Girls'

Society in London. As a school-girl, she said, she disliked geography; of which, she added, she was very ignorant. Once she was set to draw an outline map of the world from memory. "On showing it to my governess,"

said the Princess, "she said in quite an alarmed manner--'Why, you have left out China! Don't you know where it is?' 'Yes,' I replied, very stubbornly, but very loyally, 'I know where it should be, but I am not going to put it in my map. The Queen is angry with China now, so it has no right to have a place in the world at all.'" The spirit of exclusiveness manifested by the little lady might readily be quarrelled with in some quarters; but surely the act gives promise of a Queen who, like her to whom she was loyal, will, when her glory cometh--though, may it be far distant--prove the pride of every loyal Briton!

The somersaultic cleverness by which a child will get out of an awkward situation has been often revealed, but seldom with more humour than in the two succeeding ill.u.s.trations. A minister returning from church towards the manse on a Sunday, came suddenly on a boy leaning earnestly over the parapet of a bridge with a short rod and a long string having a baited hook on the far end, by which he was trying his luck in the burn beneath. "Boy," he exclaimed severely, "is this a day on which you should be catching fish?" "Wha's catchin' fish?" drawled the budding Isaac Walton; "I'm juist tryin' to droon this worm." The next boy was yet cleverer--alike in fishing and in speech. He had several trout dangling from his hand by a string when he met the minister abruptly in a quick bend of the road. There was no chance of escape; but his ready wit saved him. He walked boldly forward, and taking the first word as the two were about to meet, he dangled the trout-hand high, looked the minister square in the face, and exclaimed, "That sorts them for snappin' at flees on the Sabbath!" and pa.s.sed hence, leaving his antic.i.p.ated accuser flabbergasted.

Ruskin says of children: "They are forced by nature to develop their powers of invention, as a bird its feathers of flight;" and we might add, remarks another writer, "that the inventive faculty, like a bird, is apt, when fully grown, to fly away. Then, when their own imaginative resources begin to fail them, one observes children begin to read books of adventure with avidity--at the age, say, of ten or twelve years.

Before that, no Rover of the Andes or Erling the Bold can equal the heroic achievements they evolve from their inner consciousness." Who, for instance, could hope to "put a patch" on the experience of those two little boys who spent a snowy day during the Christmas holidays tiger-shooting in their father's dining-room; and as one, making his cautious way among the legs of the dinner-table, for the nonce a pathless jungle, was hailed by the other with, "Any tigers there, Bill?"

he answered gloriously: "Tigers? I'm knee-deep in them!"

That excellent story recalls to me another, not unlike it. Also of a Christmas time. The children had asked permission to get up a play, and it had been granted on the condition that they did it all themselves without help or hint. As the eldest was only ten they accepted the condition with alacrity, for young children hate to be interfered with and hampered by their elders. When the evening came and the family and audience had collected, the curtain was drawn back and revealed the heroine (aged nine), who stated with impa.s.sioned sobs that her husband had been in South Africa for the past three years, but that she was expecting his return. Truly enough the hero (aged ten) entered, and proceeded, after affectionate but hasty greetings, to give his wife an eloquent account of his doings, the battles he had fought, the Boers he had killed, and the honours he had won.

When he at last paused for breath, his wife rose, and taking his hand led him to the back, where a short curtain covered a recess. "I, too, dear," she said proudly, "have not been idle."

And pulling back the curtain she displayed six cradles occupied by six large baby dolls!

And that again recalls another, quite in the same line. One day a gentleman walking down a street observed a little boy seated on a doorstep. Going up to him, he said, "Well, my little chap, how is it you are sitting outside on the doorstep, when I see through the window all the other young folks inside playing games and having a good time? Why aren't you inside joining in the fun?" "I guess, stranger, that I'm in this game." replied the boy. "But how can you be, when you are out on the doorstep, and the others are all inside?" "Oh, I'm in the show right enough. You see, we're playing at being married. I'm the baby, and I'm not born yet!"

The late Dr. Norman M'cLeod--the great Norman--rejoiced in telling a story about two ragged children whom he found busy on the side of a country road one day, working with some stiffened mud, which they had carefully sc.r.a.ped together. "What's this you are making?" he asked. One of the children replied that it was a kirk. "A kirk! Ay, and where's the door?" "There it's." "And the pulpit?" "That's it." "And the minister?"

The little one hesitated, then replied, very innocently--"We hadna dirt enough left to mak' a minister."

The minister, of course--and the weaker his character he should be the more careful--must always approach children with caution if he hopes to come out of the interview with his reputation unscathed. I have heard or read of a member of the cloth--a supreme egoist--who was visiting at a house when but the mother and her little girl--a mere child--were at home. As the self-esteemed great man was holding the mother in conversation, he noticed with pride that the child, who reposed on the hearthrug with a school-slate tilted on her knee, was making furtive glances up at his face, and returning her attention regularly to the slate, on which she kept scrawling with a pencil. When at length she stopped and looked serious, "Well, my dear," he exclaimed, "have you been trying to draw my portrait?" She did not reply, "Come," he continued, coaxingly, "you must let me see it." "Oh," interposed the proud mother, "she's awfu' clever at the drawin'." This made the minister still more eager to see the work, and he repeated his request for an exposure; but the child clutched the slate only more tightly to her breast and did not look up. "She's aye sae shy, ye ken," interceded the mother, as she reached her hand to procure the work of art by main force. It was then the little one found her tongue, and she exclaimed--"Oh, it wasna very like him, and I just put a tail till't, and ca'd it a doggie." The _denouement_ leaves nothing to be desired.

Dean Ramsay, to whom his country owes so much for the elucidation of its characteristics, tells humorously of the elder of a kirk having found a little boy and his sister playing marbles on Sunday, and put his reproof not at all in judicious form by exclaiming--"Boy, do you know where children go who play marbles on the Sabbath-day?" Not in judicious form, truly, for the boy replied, "Ay, they gang doun to the field by the water below the brig." "No," roared out the elder, "they go to h.e.l.l, and are burned." Worse than ever--for the elder--for the little fellow, really shocked, now called to his sister, "Come awa', Jeanie, here's a man swearin' awfu'."

"Among the lower orders in Scotland humour is found, occasionally, very rich in mere children," observes the Dean, "and I recollect a remarkable ill.u.s.tration of this early native humour occurring in a family in Forfarshire, where I used in former days to be very intimate. A wretched woman, who used to traverse the country as a beggar or tramp, left a poor half-starved little girl by the road-side near the house of my friends. Always ready to a.s.sist the unfortunate, they took charge of the child, and as she grew a little older they began to give her some education, and taught her to read. She soon made some progress in reading the Bible, and the native odd humour of which we speak began soon to show itself. On reading the pa.s.sage which began 'Then David rose,' etc., the child stopped and looked up knowingly to say, 'I ken wha that was,' and being asked what she could mean, she confidently said, 'That's David Rowse the pleuchman.' And again, reading the pa.s.sage where the words occur, 'He took Paul's girdle,' the child said, with much confidence, 'I ken what he took that for;' and on being asked to explain, replied at once, 'To bake his bannocks on.'"

Among less than a dozen examples in all of child humour, the good Dean has yet another worth telling, which he says, used to be narrated by an old Mr. Campbell of Jura, who told the story of his own son. The boy, it seems, was much spoilt by indulgence. In fact, the parents were scarce able to refuse him anything he demanded. He was in the drawing-room on one occasion when dinner was announced, and on being ordered up to the nursery he insisted on going down to dinner with the company. His mother was for refusal, but the child persevered and kept saying, "If I dinna gang, I'll tell yon." His father then, for peace sake, let him go.

So he went, and sat at the table by his mother. When he found every one getting soup and himself omitted, he demanded soup, and repeated, "If I dinna get it, I'll tell yon." Well, soup was given, and various other things yielded to his importunities, to which he always added the usual threat of "telling yon." At last, when it came to wine, his mother stood firm, and positively refused, as "a bad thing for little boys," and so on. He then became more vociferous than ever about "telling yon;" and, as still he was refused, he declared, "Now I'll tell yon," and at last roared out--"_My new breeks are made oot o' the auld curtains!_"

That, however, is not the most delectable of child stories. We prefer the ideas of the little folks within the region of philosophy. When, for example, they want to know "Whaur div' a' the figures gang when they're rubbit oot?" and ask such questions as "Where does the dark go when the light comes?" "Was it not very wrong of G.o.d not to make Cain good as well as Abel?" or, "If it be true that some of the stars are bigger than this earth, how do they not keep the rain off?"

"I say, father," asked a little fellow as he raised his eyes off his home lesson, "Who invented the multiplication table?" "Oh, I don't know," he was answered; "it was invented long ago; why?"

"Well, I was thinking if the gentleman that invented it didn't know it already, he must have had a tough job; and if he did know it, what was the good of him inventing it at all?" It was a cloudy and moonless night when a little fellow was taken out by his mother, who went to call for a friend. "Mamma," he exclaimed, looking up, "I expect G.o.d's been very busy this evening, for I see He has forgotten to hang the stars out."

She was a very small Miss who went to church alone one day, where an organ had recently been introduced. As she stood gazing about just within the door, an elder approached, and asked where she would prefer to sit. "Well," she said pertly, "if there's a monkey, I would like to be near the organ; but if there's no' a monkey, I'll just sit ony place."

A pretty good story is related of one of Governor Tilton's staff. It is said that when the individual referred to first presented himself _en militaire_ to his wife and little daughter, the latter, after gazing at him for a few minutes, turned to her mother, and exclaimed: "Why, Ma, that's not a real soldier--it's Pa!" Equally observant was another youngster, who was sent by his parent to take a letter to the post-office and pay the postage on it. The boy returned highly elated, and said: "Father, I seed a lot of men putting letters in a little place; and when no one was looking, I slipped yours in for nothing." We hardly know whether the father would laugh or storm over this unconscious attempt to defraud the revenue. But no matter.

Two little London girls who had been sent by the kindness of the vicar's wife to have "a happy day in the country," narrating their experiences on their return, said, "Oh, yes, mum, we did 'ave a happy day. We saw two pigs killed and a gentleman buried."

It is the rare that fascinates. Many years ago, I was living in a house where, on an evening, a little Miss was toiling over her school-lesson, and declaiming loudly, "The--sow--has--pigs." Being a city child, I wondered whether she knew of what she was reading, and asked, "Did you ever see a sow and pigs, Mary?" "No," she replied smartly, "but when I was going to the school the day, I saw a policeman getting his photograph taken."

But speaking here of London children, reminds me of two London stories which should not be omitted. So here:--

Two small boys walking down Tottenham Court Road, pa.s.sed a tobacconist's shop. The bigger remarked--"I say, Bill, I've got a ha-penny, and if you've got one too, we'll have a penny smoke between us."

Bill produced his copper, and Tommy, diving into the shop, promptly re-appeared with a penny cigar in his mouth.

The boys walked side by side for a few minutes, when the smaller mildly said, "I say, Tom, when am I to have a puff? The weed's half mine."

"Oh, you shut up," was the business-like reply. "I'm the chairman of this company, and you are only a shareholder. You can spit."

That is the first. The second, though less precocious, is yet more enjoyable. Besides, we know it is true, while the other--well, it is not above suspicion.

One day, when seeking a model, Miss Dorothy Tennant (now Mrs. H. M.

Stanley) discovered a likely subject in the shape of a crossing-sweeper; and, while conducting him to Richmond Terrace, she met her family's old friend, Mr. Gladstone. Greatly moved by her companion, he exclaimed:

"Who's your friend?" Then and there the crossing-sweeper, much to his dismay, was presented to the "People's William."

On entering the Tennant mansion, the urchin was tremendously impressed by the liveried servant who had opened the door, and, after looking back at him several times, whispered mysteriously to his kind hostess:

"I say, miss, why does your big brother wear bra.s.s b.u.t.tons?"

Always thoughtful, Miss Tennant first led her charge to the servants hall, where she sat beside him as he played havoc with the well-filled dishes placed before him. At the conclusion of his repast, Miss Tennant asked the boy how he liked it.

"Proper," replied the crossing-sweeper; "yer mother do cook prime!"