Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories Part 25

London having yielded its quota, the "Second City" may be again drawn upon.

A little boy of tender years was sitting on the doorstep of a house in Bridgeton, there, the other morning, crying bitterly, when a girl of about the same age accosted him, and the following conversation was overheard:--"What are ye greetin' for, laddie?" she inquired, in sympathetic tones. "Did onybody hit ye?" "N-n-na," sobbed the boy.

"Then, what is't ye're greetin' for?" the little damsel went on. "'Cause my wee brither's gane to heaven," exclaimed the little fellow, bitterly, between his sobs. "Oh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the girl; and then, after a pause, "but ye shouldna greet like that--maybe he hasna."

Another. Recently a little fellow came home from school crying bitterly, and altogether manifesting great sorrow. "What's the matter, Geordie,"

sympathetically inquired his mother, "has onybody been hittin' ye?"

"N-n-n-o," answered the boy between his sobs. "Then, what are you crying about?" she went on. "Boo! hoo! wee Sammy Sloan's faither an' mither hae flitted to Coatbrig!" "Tuts, laddie, dinna greet about that," she exclaimed, re-a.s.suringly, "there's plenty mair laddies bidin' in the street besides Sammy Sloan that ye can play wi'." "I ken that," said Geordie, with another sob, "but he was the only yin I could lick."

Children, really, as we have been revealing so frequently here, have the fresh and original notions of things, and are always frank enough to give them voice.

A little boy was reading the story of a missionary having been eaten by cannibals. "Papa," he asked, "will the missionary go to heaven?" "Yes, my son," replied the father. "And will the cannibals go there, too?"

queried the youthful student. "No," was the reply. After thinking the matter over for some time, the little fellow exclaimed--"Well, I don't see how the missionary can go to heaven if the cannibals don't, when he's inside the cannibals."

One Sunday evening, while sitting on his mother's knee listening to the story of Jonah being swallowed by the whale, a little fellow looked up seriously into her face and asked, "Ma, did Jonah wear his slippers in the whale's belly? Because, if he didna, the tackets in his boots wad tear a' its puddin's."

Dr. John Ker of Edinburgh, in his recently published volume of reminiscences--_Memories Grave and Gay_--tells of how "in a Banffshire manse one Sunday evening, all the family were sitting quietly reading in the drawing-room, when the youngest boy, with a laudable thirst for knowledge, went up to his mother and asked a question, for the answer to which she referred him to me. Coming up to me, he said--

"'Mr. Ker, is it true that the devil goes about like a roaring lion?"

"'It must,' I replied, 'be true, for it is in the Bible.'

"This was followed by another question which I did not attempt to answer--

"'Then, wha keeps his fire in when he's gaun aboot?'"

"Do you know, mamma, I don't believe Solomon was so rich after all?"

observed a sharp boy to his mother, who prided herself on her orthodoxy.

"My child!" she exclaimed in pious horror, "what does the Bible say?"

"That's just it," he answered. "It says that 'Solomon slept with his fathers.' Now, surely, if he had been rich he'd have had a bed to himself."

A father once said to a little boy, not so obedient as might be desired, "Everything I say to you goes in at one ear and out at the other." "Is that what little boys has two ears for, daddy?" asked the child, quite innocently.

Engaging his tender "hopeful" in the wonders of astronomy--"Men have learned the distances of the stars," observed the father; "and, with their spectroscopes, found out what they are made of." "Yes," responded the boy admiringly; "and isn't it strange, pa, how they found out their names too!"

SCHOOLROOM FACTS AND FANCIES.

These are so numerous as to demand a separate chapter.

Talking of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, a lady teacher asked her cla.s.s what a serpent was like, when a boy aptly replied, "It's like a lang rope furlin'."

On another occasion, in the same cla.s.s, the question was, "What does the devil tempt little boys and girls to do?" when the comical answer came, "To chap at fouk's doors, mem."

It has been often told, but is worth repeating, how a pupil teacher was doing his level best to make the children remember Samson's mighty deeds with the jawbone of an a.s.s, and, recapitulating, he asked, "What did Samson slay ten thousand Philistines with? Eh?" No reply came. Then, pointing to his jawbone, he asked, "What is this?" And at once the answer belched proudly from half-a-dozen throats in unison, "The jawbone of an a.s.s."

In a country school the lesson was on "The Prodigal Son," and the question, "What were the husks that the swine did eat?" met with the prompt answer, "Tawtie peelin's." In a city seminary a teacher asked her cla.s.s, "Who knows everything we say and do?" when she received the unexpected reply, "The fouk that bides next door to us."

Expecting to get the answer "Carnivorous" (as it bore on the lesson), a teacher asked his cla.s.s for an example of a bird of prey, and among other answers he got was "A yellow yite." The boy who responded so, on being asked to explain, continued, "Because it eats worms."

"What do you call the bird or beast that feeds on both animal and vegetable foods?" was the next question. The teacher antic.i.p.ated "Omnivorous" this time, but it did not come. There was silence for a little. Then a boy, who evidently had been ruminating, responded nonchalantly, "A gutsy brute, sir."

In examining the boys in the composition of sentences, a master began: "If I ask you," said he, "what have I in my hand? you must not say simply 'Chalk,' but make a full sentence of it, and say, 'You have chalk in your hand.' Now I will proceed. What have I on my feet?" The answer came immediately, "Boots." "Wrong; you haven't been observing my directions," he rebukingly replied. "Stockings," another heedlessly ventured to answer. "Wrong again--worse than ever," wrathfully exclaimed the _magister_. "Well?" he continued interrogatively to a lad near him.

"Please, sir," then he paused--perhaps he thought it _might_ sound funny, but he felt it _must_ be right, and so he recklessly gasped out--"Corns!"

But the answers are not always so stupid.

"Why is it," asked a teacher, "the sun never sets on the British possessions?" "Because," slowly responded an ingenuous youngster, "the British possessions are in the north, south, and east, and the sun always sets in the west."

During a recent School Board examination in the west of Scotland, the examiner asked a little girl to explain what was meant by the expression, _He was amply rewarded._ "Paid for't," was her instant reply. "No, no; you are wrong. Suppose you have to go into a baker's shop and buy a half-quarter loaf, and lay down fourpence, would you say you had amply rewarded the baker?" Unhesitatingly she replied "Yes."

"Why?" "Because the loaf's only twopence-three-farthings," was the unlooked-for answer.

Quite like that is the story of a small boy into whose head a teacher was one day labouring almost in vain to get, as he thought, even the faintest correct notion of the first rule in arithmetic. "Look here now, Johnnie," he said at length, "if I were to give you two rabbits and your father were to give you three rabbits, how many rabbits would you then have?" "Six." "No, no;" and the teacher set out bits of chalk to show how he could only have five. "Ah, but," drawled out Johnnie, "I have a rabbit at hame already."

It was a notion of multiplication that another teacher was endeavouring to get properly lodged within the skull of another boy, and by way of putting the effort to a practical test, he said: "Now, Peter, suppose I was a tailor who supplied your father with a suit of clothes for three pounds, which he promised to pay me in weekly instalments of one shilling, how much would your father be due me at the end of a year?"

"Three pounds," replied Peter slowly. "Nonsense, Peter; think again."

Peter thought again, but again answered as before. "You don't know that simple sum!" exclaimed the teacher in amazement. "Ay, I ken it weel enough," responded Peter, "but ye dinna ken my faither."

"Did any of you ever see an elephant's skin?" asked the master of an infant school. "I have," shouted a six-year-old at the foot of the cla.s.s. "Where?" "On the elephant."

A little boy of my acquaintance, while yet a pupil in the infant department, was one day given a slate more to engage his attention than aught else. But he had some notion of drawing, and when the teacher came round she was astonished to find he had set down a fair picture of a bird on a bough. "Ha! who drew this?" she asked. "Mysel'," was the canny Scotch reply. "And who's mysel'?" she queried. "Oh, I'm fine," was the second response, not less Scotch than the first. The English reader, of course, won't fairly understand the word "fine" as spoken there; but every Scotsman will, as also how "who's" may be mistaken for "how's."

There is another "fine" story. It was asked of a cla.s.s, "How did the Israelites get across the Red Sea?" "Fine," exclaimed a youth with brightening eyes; "'twas the 'Gyptians was droon'd."

"What do you mean by a temperate region?" asked an inspector of a cla.s.s, putting due emphasis on the word temperate. "The region, sir," responded a boy "where they drinks only temperants drinks."

Not long ago a cla.s.s of boys were being examined on the different kinds of wood; and one little chap was asked to name the specimen (a piece of mahogany) which was held in the examiner's hand. He hesitated, and the inspector, by way of suggestion, remarked, "Why, don't you know the materials that your mother's drawers are made of?" This seemed to simplify the matter, and, amidst a roar of laughter, came the quick reply--"Flannelette!"

"Name anything friable," said a teacher. "Ham," was the ready answer.

"What is a papal bull?"

"A golden calf."

"What is ice?"

"Water fast asleep."

"What is a skeleton?"

"A man without any meat on it."

A teacher was examining a cla.s.s on the battle of Bannockburn, and asked, "Who killed de Bohun?" No one knew. He raised his arm in an att.i.tude of striking, and yelled, with flashing eyes, "Who killed de Bohun, I say?"

A little fellow near him, who expected the blow, raised his arm in a defensive att.i.tude, and whined, "Oh, please, sir, it wasna me."