No More Learning

One of the most interesting incidents, how-
ever, occurred when his wooden engine fell
down. He picked it up, kissed it, and said
cheerily, "All better now; don't cry, puff-
puff! Be a brick! "--and added in a low
voice to himself, "He's going to be a brick. "
And the other evening, on going to bed, his
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
attention was caught by the brightness of the
sunset. "The daylight has forgotten to go
away. Tell him to go, pappa! " After a while:
"Has he gone? " "Not yet, dear; he is just
waiting to see his sister before he goes. "
"His sister! Has he a sister? " "Yes; she
is called Starlight: when he sees her, he will
say good-bye and go away! " "Oh! " That
seemed new, but quite natural and reasonable;
so he lay down quietly, with that ready
acquiescence which is a child's predisposition
to obedience.
Curiously related to this dream-life, and to
the sudden awakening from it, is the way in
which a child's occasional consciousness of the
unreality of its dreams affects its confidence in
the reality of its perceptions while awake.
Professor Sully, who has recorded so many
delightful and significant observations of child
life, mentions a boy of five who asked his
teacher, "Wouldn't it be funny if we were
dreaming? Supposing every one in the whole
world were dreaming, wouldn't that be funny?
They might be, mightn't they? " The strange
thing is that this sense of the illusiveness
of the world is not confined to childhood.
Wordsworth told Professor Bonamy Price that
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
there was a time in his life when he had to
push against something that resisted, to be
sure that there was anything outside of him.
"I was sure of my own mind; everything else
fell away and vanished into thought. " And
these strange "fallings from us" and "vanish-
ings" come within the experience of Tenny-
son, just as Wordsworth "used to brood over
the stories of Enoch and Elijah, and almost to
persuade himself that, whatever might become
of others, he would be translated, in something
of the same way, to heaven," so Tennyson
had moments in which, at one time, "he felt he
could not die," and at another
seem'd to move among a world of ghosts,
And feel himself the shadow of a dream.
And a yet more striking coincidence may be
found in Newman's "Apologia": "I thought
life might be a dream, or I an angel, and all
this world a deception, my fellow-angels by a
playful device concealing themselves from me,
and deceiving me with the semblance of a
material world. "
Every now and again one is startled by
some preternaturally wise or beautiful saying
from the lips of a child, which seems to justify
the poet's thought that
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
What could be more like a sweet and clear
echo from the "Fioretti" than the words of
the little boy who, as Professor Sully tells us,
remarked to his mother that if he could say
what he liked to God, it would be, "Love me
when I am naughty " ; or the lovely saying of
a little girl to her mother, who was weeping
for a beloved one: "Why do you cry? It is
only that he has woken up and we are still
asleep. "
"Such sayings are not unwholesome or pre-
cocious," observes the writer of a notable
article in The Pilot* from which I have quoted
the last incident: the priggish, mawkish,
unwholesome sayings are of a very different
character, and have a deplorably sancti-
monious ring about them. "We are having
quite a thetfllojun for our son ! " remarked a
little girl of her four-year-old brother when he
hazarded some comment on the divine inten-
tion in the making of trees. And indeed in
children the theologian is often born a twin
* "Some Reflections on Childhood. " The Pilot, Sept. 8,
1900.
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
brother of the poet. How can the busy brains
help speculating on the God who is the Father
they pray to, the heaven which is His
dwelling-place, the angels who watch unseen
around their cribs? It would be unnatural
indeed if they did not try to find convenient
places for these invisible spirits in their small
world, just as certain tropical birds contrive
means for lighting their nests with fireflies.
The childish speculator is logical, free-
spoken, and bold to audacity, but he is never
irreverent. He listens greedily, and his reten-
tive memory stores away unintelligible talk for
future deliberation. He is prone to put awk-
ward questions, and in our stupidity and
impatience, or, it may be, in our dread of
indulging a spirit of curious levity, we are apt
to impose silence somewhat brusquely on the
eager inquirer. This is a miserable mistake,
especially if we insist at the same time on
giving religious instruction regarding truths
which it would frequently be much wiser to
leave for maturer years. If we teach, we must
be prepared to listen to many theological
difficulties, to the oddest conjectures, and the
most amazing assimilations of ideas only half
understood. "What do they do in heaven?
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
That puzzles me sometimes," said one little
girl. "Why does Jesus take little babies up
into heaven again? Does He send them
down to any one else? " "Does God like us
to show our moons" (the white crescents at
the root of the nails, from which a child should
always press back the skin when drying her
hands)? But most surprising of all was the
account of how God once went to Hades--to
visit there, and she might perhaps have gone
with Him. (She might have been eight years
old, in heaven, before she came here; but she
did not know. ) He went because He wanted
to know what it was like. Of course, He made
Hades, but He didn't know what it was like;
He had workmen to make it for Him, no doubt.
He took all those in heaven down with Him--
babies and all. Alongside of her unhesitating
speculativeness ran a grave sense of decorum:
"Of course it isn't proper to laugh when you
are saying your prayers. You would behave
if you went to see the Queen; and God is
greater ; " and a perfectly clear sense of right
and wrong: "Don't you feel reckless some-
times, mother ? --as if you wanted to disobey
the laws of God! " and a truer conception of
the divine compassion, I trust, than is to be
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
found in some human creeds, for she had been
reading about what she called "Top-het," and
after asking whether "that pit of darkness and
fire " were one with Hades, observed : "There
must be only very few people in Tophet; only
those, I should think, who won't be sorry for
what they have done. " Singularly enough,
too, even the moral of a story is apprehended
in a way that would astonish many novel-
readers. "Oh no, I can't be Theseus," ex-
claimed the same child, when it was a question
of playing at "The Heroes. " It was not
because she was a girl--that never presented
any difficulty: "I wouldn't be Theseus for
anything, for, after all his great deeds, there is
a chapter which says ' How Theseus fell by
his pride '"!
Who will enable us to form an adequate
conception of what a child thinks about those
"lesser brethren" in feathers and fur which
we are pleased to call the brute creation? In
this respect, as in so many others, there are
two very different sides to a child's nature--its
confidence in animals and its dread of them.
The little man or little woman appears to
trust the four-footed much more readily than
the feathered bipeds. Why, it would be
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
exceedingly difficult to say, unless we catch at
the notion that in an early stage of their
existence our own immortals were also small
quadrupeds. One small person I knew--almost
two years of age--was for some time thrown
into absolute panic by the sparrows in the
garden. It was ludicrous beyond belief to
see her when a bird dropped down on the
grass anyway near her. She would stamp,
and scream "No, No! "--and when the
handful of feathers would not be driven off
she would scuttle headlong into the house with
a yell for "Mamma! " Yet this singular little
coward would blow kisses to a donkey of her
acquaintance, and when she had a chance
would bustle up fearlessly to a dog-kennel
and imperiously summon the chained tenant,
"Come out, donnie [doggie]; naughty donnie! "
And who has not seen village babes, for whom
cattle had no terrors, kept at bay by a couple
of formidable geese on the common--geese?
nay, fiery dragons hissing and red with ravin.
Yet, when there is confidence between them,
what can be more winning than the child's
half-shy advances towards a speaking acquain-
tance; and, on the other hand, what more
beautiful--pathetic almost in its wistfulness--
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
than the response made by many dumb crea-
tures? Even a cat, devoid as it so frequently
appears to be of any attachment to persons,
will allow itself to be turned all but inside
out by infantine hands. It may be lifted
by the tail with impunity, or utilised as a
cushion, with the inevitable result that the
baba fresh from Paradise acquires appalling
possibilities of cruelty. With the big dog it
is not quite the same. Devoted as is his sub-
servience, tender as is his care, long-suffering
and parentally tolerant as he is, there is a
strong placid look in the creature's human
eyes that distinctly indicates the line beyond
which the angelic little savage must not go.
Occasionally one has a pleasant glimpse of
the friendly offices which a child wishes to
exercise when relations appear to become a
trifle strained among playmates. "Pussy and
the jackdaw are such lovely companions,"
W. V. confided to me on her return from a
visit. "Pussy never runs at him, except when
he is on the ground. She can't help it then;
can she, father? But he's all right when he's
up a tree. I'll tell Paul she can't really help
it. "
In one of his books Michelet draws an
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
exquisite picture of the destiny of the animal,
"that sombre mystery, that world of dreams
and dumb sorrows," through the long ages,
and of his redemption through the little Child.
In a remote antiquity the East conceived the
idea, to which it still adheres, that the animal
is a soul enchanted and cast into deep sleep, a
prisoner on the night-side of nature. In the
Middle Ages the people returned to that belief
in spite of the dogmas of the early theologians,
who had argued, some that the brute creation
had no souls and so were beyond the pale of
our sympathy and compassion; others that
they must have souls--seeing that they were
devils! It was the Child who, for a time at
least, raised these "lower brethren" from
this degraded bondage and oppression.
The tiny mortal--himself under a spiritual
ban--had no fear of these supposed incarna-
tions of evil. He played with them; he made
them his friends and confidants, and in turn
they loved him and grew docile to his will.
The grown-up people saw that nothing dis-
astrous came of this familiar intercourse. On
the contrary, they discovered a curious
similarity between their own little ones and
these dumb playmates. The animal became
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
one of the family. It was treated as a poor
relation; it shared the joys of high feast-days,
and went into mourning in time of bereave-
ment. At last it was even admitted to church
on Christmas Day, and had its anthems, half
in ecclesiastical Latin and half in the popular
speech. Then sprang up the lovely mediaeval
legends, in which animals were not only
recognised as God's creatures, but as the
humble and helpful companions of man.
By solitary waters and among the rocks
of the mountain forest, bird or beast glad-
dened the rude home of many a saintly
anchorite.
This golden age of reparation did not long
endure. Popes and councils barred the church
doors; philosophers and casuists decided that
the animal had no soul, no God, no compensa-
tion for toil and suffering and cruelty; little
solace in this world and no hope for the next.
Still, a beginning had been made; pity for the
brute had been born into the world of the West,
and from it have sprung our abhorrence of the
wanton infliction of pain and our recognition
that the brute has its rights. Even the theo-
logian, when he now approaches the subject of
the life and destiny of animals, does so in a
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
spirit of wonder and humility which contrasts
in a striking manner with the unfeeling and
short-sighted assurance of his antique pre-
decessors. "It is indeed," writes Newman,
"a very overpowering thought, when we get to
fix our minds on it, that we periodically use--
I may say hold intercourse with--creatures
who are as much strangers to us, as mysterious,
ar if they were the fabulous unearthly beings,
more powerful than man and yet his slaves,
which Eastern superstitions have invented.
We have more real knowledge about the angels
than about the brutes; they have, apparently,
passions, habits, and a certain unaccountable-
ness, but all is mystery about them. We do
not know whether they can sin or not, whether
they are under punishment, whether they are
to live after this life; we inflict very great
sufferings on a portion of them, and they in
turn, every now and then, retaliate upon us, as
if by a wonderful law. . . . Cast your thoughts
abroad on the whole number of them, large
and small, in vast forests, or in the water, or in
blue air, and then say whether the presence of
such countless multitudes, so various in their
natures, so strange and wild in their shapes,
living on the earth without ascertainable object,
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CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
is not as mysterious as anything Scripture says
about the angels. "
V The time, it is to be hoped, is not far distant
when no creature will fear man, and when it
will be considered shameful that a child should
be frightened into that senseless dread of
animals which so often prompts to hostility
and cruelty.
There is a trait in childhood which is too
often taken for granted as universal and in-
variable--that of demonstrative affection. So
far as my observation goes, one is more struck
by the gay thoughtlessness, the happy indiffer-
ence of the Baba log, than by their tenderness.
Doubtless there are numerous exceptions, but
in the main children seem to be somewhat
impatient of caresses and not too spontaneous
in their endearments. Nature is a wise mother
in this as in other things, and it is prudent in
fathers and mothers to refrain from too frequent
interference. But how delightful it is when a
manly little fellow of two or three lets you see
how his joyous heart--his whole "eatable"
body, indeed--is sparkling and bubbling over
with his affection for you. It was one of Boy
Beloved's charming ways to come, with his
open hands placed side by side in front of
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
his breast, and to dance as he uttered his
cooing yearning cry, " Oooo, mamma! " "Nice
hand! " he would say later, taking it in both
of his own and pressing it to his face, to his
neck, to his breast; "other hand too! " In-
deed, there never was such a hand-olater.
Suddenly, as you are walking along with
his fingers crumpled up in your palm, he
will bend aside till his lips rest on your poor
worshipful knuckles. Sometimes he will leave
his "chattels," as he calls them, and come with
the petition, " Let me kiss you a little, mamma I
Let us love ourselves"; then it is "Thank
you! "--and he trots off to his incessant toil
as porter, station-master, engine-driver (and
engine, too, so far as the whistling goes), for
his motto is Nulla dies sine lined--no day with-
out a (railway) line. When he is full of gleeful
mischief, and you foolishly say, "Won't you
give me a kiss? " he may reply with a giggle,
"They are not ripe yet! " and it is just as well
that you should learn to let your apples redden
on the tree.
At night a certain farewell duologue has been
nearly invariable for two years:
"See you in the morning, mamma! "
"All right, dear. "
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
Da capo several times.
"All right, my sweet! "
"Am I your sweet, really? "
Or, after kissing of hands, back and palm,
kissing of cheek, forehead, and hair, it is:
"I like you, pappa! "
"And I like you! "
"Do you like me? "
"Yes, dear. "
"And I like you; you are so nice, you are
so sweet, you are so very lovely! "
"So are you! "
"So are you! I like you, and I love you! "
"And 1 love you. Go to sleep now, like a
good boy. "
In a deep voice, and with a sigh of satis-
faction: "Yes, I will. "
And now I must draw this desultory gossip
to a close. I fear I have already exceeded all
reasonable limits, but temptation, in introducing
this small collection of Children's Sayings, to
say something myself of the Venerable Folk,
the Baba log, has proved too strong. Of course
I have kept to the sunny, the idyllic side of the
subject. Why not? I know there is another
side, but this is a true side; it is the side
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
always turned to me, and I am well pleased
with it, just as most people are well pleased
with the single sunny side of the moon.
Wherefore should I go needlessly beyond
the luminous disc into the darkness and cold
behind?
One of the merits of this collection is that
all the Sayings have been vouched for as true.
-- They were contributed to the Sunday Magazine,
in the pages of which, from time to time, most
of them have appeared. Here and there I
have ventured now to add a comment. The
object in publishing them in the present form
is nothing more ambitious than the reader's
pleasure, though I have no doubt that they
may be made to serve an excellent practical
purpose beyond pleasure.
A child's sayings are often a curious and
comprehensive commentary on the characters
of the unsuspicious persons concerned in their
up-bringing. It is not always flattering when
some chance phrase it utters enables us to see
ourselves as it has evidently been in the habit
of seeing us; and possibly our friends may
have sometimes had amusement at our expense
in consequence of the twitterings of these tell-
tale "birds of the air. " Sometimes, too, in its
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
dramatic moods, a child shows itself more
acutely critical of its own character and con-
duct than its parents are capable of being. In
the character of an imaginary Gladys, Pinafori-
fera used to make her own foibles the subject
of her kindly sarcasm. Gladys was overpowered
by the blessings showered on Pinaforifera:
"She is so awfully well off; you are so kind to
her--and her mother is too. I never had a tea-
service when I was a little girl; and only one
doll, which I kept for--I had it when I was
two, and I am now fourteen; how many years
was that? Could P. keep a doll so long? "
"I don't think so. "
"No, I don't think so; she wants a new one
every month. "
As I write I hear the children singing in the
garden: they have come to see "poor Jenny
Jones, poor Jenny Jones, poor Jenny Jones,"
and for various ingeniously devised reasons
Jenny is not to be seen just now. Did it ever
occur to you, as you lay on the warm grass of
a summer evening, in how many places in all
the sunny shires of England little children
were at that moment playing at some old-world
singing-game, handed down from generations
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
long forgotten? Just picture to yourselves the
countless rings and groups of the Baba log,
gleefully singing and dancing hand in hand,
laughing and shouting, all over the forty coun-
ties; and think that on every village green, on
the broad highway, on the strip of common, in
the streets of towns, in the slums of crowded
cities, there have been children just like these,
singing the same songs, acting the same small
dramas in practically the same fashion--for
children are rigorous conservatives--for cen-
turies. Then let your fancy travel over seas
and into still remoter times, till at last you
come to the market-place of a Syrian town,
where the small dark-eyed youngsters have
fallen out in their sport, and will neither dance
to the marriage pipes nor beat their breasts
when they hear the wailing of the mourners.
And the one supreme Lover of Children looks
on, half amused, half grave, as He sees in their
childish caprice and their bickerings the very
image of their elders: "For John came neither
eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a
devil. The Son of Man came eating and drink-
ing, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous,
and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and
sinners. "
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
One of the most charming characteristics of
childhood is, as I have said, its tender-
ness and loving-kindness, and in the
attempt to group these Sayings I give
precedence to this most angelic quality.
A rosy face, two big grey eyes, a bit of a
nose, and a little rosebud of a mouth, a head
crowned with a fuzzy crop of sunshiny hair, a
blue cotton "overall," and two firm, shapely
little legs. That is Joyce.
She was only nineteen months old, and as
she stood at her mother's knee that mother
thought for the hundred-and-first time that
there never was such a baby-girl.
"Mother's little lamb! " she said aloud ten-
derly. Joyce wanted to make an appropriate
response, and looking up lovingly answered:
"Baa! "
Cyril was seven years old. He loved his
mother very dearly, and had been separated
from her sometimes, as she had to go to India.
Once when she came to wish him good-
night he was under the bed-clothes. He
came out with a flushed little face, and said as
he hugged her tight, "Mummie, do you know
what I was doing? I was asking God to love
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
you as much as I do. He couldn't love you
more. "
His mother was very delicate, and one day
in winter he said, "Oh, father, please shut
that window; mummie may catch cold, and we
must take care of our best. "
A loving-hearted wee man said sweetly to
his mother, "Mother, I'm sorry I'm not your
father, for then I would love you so much and
take care of you. "
"How much do you love mother ? " a little
child was asked. "Up to the sky, along a bit,
and down on the other side. "
Two little lads of our acquaintance were
discussing how much they each loved father
and mother.
The elder said, "Oh ! I couldn't live without
'muvver': if she ever dies, I shall go and dig
her up. "
His brother replied, "Yours is a very
stupid plan: when 'farver' dies, I'm going to
have him stuffed! "
r
The story brings to mind an incident in the
childhood of Henry Ward Beecher.
When his mother died he was too young
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
to go to her funeral, but he missed her
sadly and made many inquiries about her.
By some of the family he was told that
she had gone to heaven, by others that
she had been laid in the ground. Putting
both statements together, he formed his
own conclusion and determined to act
upon it. One morning his sister Catherine
looked out and found him digging beneath
the window. He lifted his curly head at
the sound of her voice and answered,
"Why, I am going to heaven to find
mother. "
The answer of the second boy recalls the
grotesquely pathetic story, given in Bishop
-- Walsham How's "Lighter Moments," of
the poor man who had just lost his little
boy and who was being consoled by a
clergyman. The unhappy father burst
into tears, and exclaimed in the midst of
his sobs, "If 'twarna agin t' law, a
v should ha' liked to have t' little beggar
stoofed. "
"Oh, my boy, hitting mother! " exclaimed
the recipient of a gentle blow on the shoulder
from the hand of her little son.
49 d
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
"Not angry smack--love smack! " was the
nice distinction given to the action by the little
four-year-old.
"Not angry smack, love smack! " the
meaning, did we know it, of many a childish
blow.
Having lost our dear father, my sister and I,
accompanied by two of his little grandsons
(aged four and seven respectively), paid our
first sad visit to his grave, on leaving which we
noticed that the younger boy ran back and
deposited something on the slab. When he
rejoined us he said, "I thought poor grandpa
might want money, and so I put a halfpenny
on his grave. "
Last year, when Hugh was only three years
old, he lost his baby sister. He was told that
"gentle Jesus" had taken her. He missed
her very much, and seemed to have an idea
that she would be coming back again.
One afternoon while talking to his nurse he
said, "Ray, when 'gentle Jesus' brings my
baby sister back again, we will hang up her
crown in the hall [the usual place for his garden
hat], and 1 will take her upstairs, and we will
5o
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
both get into my beddy-bye, and won't we be
happy. "
Little Sidney put his curly golden head
down on his dear nurse's knee. He loved
nurse "so welly mutz," he must pray for her.
"Bless Lizzie," he prays with clasped
hands, and then adds with great fervour,
"bless the very chair she's sitting on! "
Our dear little girl said one day, "When I
am a big auntie, oo' will be a likkle Marion;
den I'll fasten oo's shoes for oo'. "
- Professor Sully, in his "Studies of Child-
hood," has gathered together several illus-
trations of this belief of children that
grown-up people will all grow gradually
smaller and smaller as they approach their
second childhood. "I cannot learn," he
writes, "that there is any such idea in
primitive folk-lore, and this suggests that
children find their way to it, in part at
least, by the suggestions of older people's
words. " But I cannot help thinking there
must be some trace of this notion in folk-
lore, could one but put a finger on it.
? Does it not lie at the base of the classic
31
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
myth of Tithonus, for whom Aurora
obtained the boon of immortality but not
that of everlasting youth and its beauty?
As her mortal lover grew old he shrank
and dwindled away, till at last, the burden
of life being intolerable and the gift of life
irrevocable, she turned him into a grass-
hopper.
Our children often amuse us with their odd
and pretty sayings. The other day our little
boy was asked by a young lady to kiss her; he
did so quietly, and said, "Wait a little, and I
will give you one with more music in it.