No More Learning

"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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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.
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"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
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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
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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. "
Another child who heard for the first time the
story of Elijah's translation in the fiery chariot
began to weep bitterly. His mother said,
"What are you crying for, Willie? " "'Cos
I'se fear'd 'Lijah will be burned," was the
unexpected answer.
A mother was trying to hush her restless
baby to sleep. Little four-year-old Neil had
toothache, and claimed attention too.
"Oh, do not disturb baby," pleaded the
mother.
Neil dried his tears, and with a look of
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
dignified reproach said, "Well, mother, I for-
give you, but if you had been my little boy, I
would have . said, 'Come to my arms, my
darling son ! '"
A little boy of a very sensitive disposition,
bewailing a childish disappointment, declared,
"My wee heart is broken! "
Hugh is a little boy just over four years of
age, and a veritable piece of human sunshine.
One day his mother was preparing him for his
morning nap, when he turned and said to her,
"I don't love you, mother, I don't. "
"Oh, sonnie, what was the text you learnt
this morning? "
A bright look came over his face, and he
repeated slowly, "Be ye kind one to another. "
The mother then enlarged upon the meaning
of the words.
Presently he was in his cot, still wearing his
socks for fear his feet should get cold. How-
ever, he objected to them, but was told that if
he wanted them off he must take them off
himself. He struggled with them for some
time, but his feet were hot and the socks were
tight. At last, half laughing and half crying,
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
he looked up in his mother's face and said,
"Be ye kind one to another. "
When taking my family round the city to
see the Jubilee illuminations, we stood in front
of a building bedecked with coloured lights.
All my efforts to draw the attention of Charles
Willie--three years last March--to them were
in vain. After the lapse of a few minutes,
pointing to a man a short distance off, who I
noticed had lost one of his legs, he asked:
"How does that poor man sit down, father? "
His sympathies were so touched that the illumi-
nations seemed to have no charm for him.
Closely allied to the child's tenderness to-
wards its own kind is its affection for
other living things, though it would not
always be easy to say where the line should
be drawn between "living things" and
things not alive.
"Oh, Gippie," said three-year-old Isobel,
hugging her dog in an agony of tears and
sobs, "I'm so sorry for you, darling Gippie,
because you've got no soul. " Then, suddenly
brightening up, though still sobbing, "But
never mind, Gippie dear, because, though
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
you've no soul, you've a spirit; and father
says you've a great spirit. "
A little dog was trembling with fear at the
high wind, and Percy put his arms round it,
\ saying, "Don't be afraid, Fido; all the hairs
of your head are numbered. "
My little brother was very fond of a cat
which had belonged to his dead uncle, and otie
day when she became ill he was in great dis-
tress, and wanted to know whether she would
go to Uncle Harry when she died. He was
told she had no soul to live in heaven.
When soon after the cat died, he came in
sobbing, "Mother, can't any part of pussy go
to heaven? " His one thought was how sad
it was she could not go to her old master.
A wee man, who much enjoys bible stories
with mother, was found relating them to his
little dog, because "I fink 'Spot' ought to
know his bible well. "
Here is little "Lo, the poor Indian "! Pro-
bably his thoughts do not travel so far as
the "equal sky" of his red brother, but
evidently he intends that his faithful dog
shall be made as eligible as possible.
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
Another little boy, on seeing his pet cat out
in the garden after a sharp shower, ran after
him, crying, "Oh, Pussie! Pussie! you
mustn't go out in the wet in your stocking-feet,
or you'll get cold. "
Bertha was a mite of three, whose greatest
love was given to flowers. She had a pet pot
of flowers which she used to carry about, and
was found kissing the buds one day. "I'se
des kissing them to make them open," she
explained when questioned.
I have already referred to the strange way
in which so many children make for them-
selves imaginary companions and play-
fellows. The following is another illus-
tration:
Their active imagination leads lonely child-
ren to invent for themselves companions and
reproduce to their vision what is described in
words only. When some one was speaking of
the "Shekinah cloud" in a twilight church
Bob exclaimed, "There it is! " pointing to the
chancel. The gathering darkness perhaps
helped his thoughts.
Little Fred was continually talking of unseen
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
companions, to whom he gave names and would
be quite hurt if his mother in any way seemed
to neglect them. "You are letting Willie's
head hang down," or, "Rosie is being
squeezed," he would say, as if some unseen
companion were in the perambulator with him.
After a time, at his mother's suggestion to
send them home, he would say, "Willie gone
home now. " He would also report conversa-
tions with his invisible playfellows, who were
evidently quite real to him.
A child, however, may be a dreamer and a
seer, but it need not on that account cease
to be either logical or practical. Indeed,
one of the odd things is the combination
of wild imagination and sound common
sense. The following Saying has the
air of being an ingenious way of begging,
but I have no doubt the little speaker was
quite innocently stating the actual facts.
He had set, out for town on a dream-
errand, and only became aware that it was
a dream when spoken to.
A lady, meeting a small boy whom she
knew, asked him where he was going. He
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
answered, " I'm going into the town to spend
> a penny, but I haven't got one! "
A gentleman found his little daughter crying
bitterly because she had had a tumble.
"Never mind, Wynnie," he said; "won't a
chocolate make it better? "
"No," said the child between her sobs,
"but two would do it. "
Ten-tenths of a child's waking life is spent
in observation. Those sharp, frank, inno-
cent eyes are constantly on the watch.
He may be talking, he may be playing, he
may be day-dreaming, but he is observing
and speculating all the time; and out of
his observations he is quickly filling up
for himself a complex system De omnibus
rebus et quibusdam aliis. The following
are a few examples of the way in which
the great work is carried on.
Bessie is an only child, and rather a lonely
one. "Look at the sun," she remarked,
watching the sky one day as the sun disappeared
behind a cloud. "He has gone to call on the
moon. Why, there he is again ! " she exclaimed,
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
as he reappeared almost at once: "I suppose
she wasn't at home. "
It was pretty to see a London child in a
copse carpeted with wild hyacinths. She
gathered great bunches of the blue flowers,
and shaking them on either side of her head,
cried, "They ring the sweetest music I have
ever heard. "
The unfolding of the fresh, unsullied bud of
a child's mind is one of the redeeming graces
of our time-worn old world. Seen through
those trailing clouds of glory which enwrap
the opening soul, the familiar commonplaces
of life and nature are transformed into wonder-
ful bewitching mysteries. "Hush! " said a
little worshipper, to whom each blossom was
the temple of a goddess, on passing a field of
closed-up daisies. "Hush! the fairies are all
in bed: see, their curtains are all closed! "
Small Kenneth said to me one day, "Auntie,
if I could throw a stone to hit the sky, I wonder
what kind of a sound it would make? "
Again, he had interestedly watched some
convolvoluses which grew in a garden that
he passed in his morning walk. Returning
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
late one evening, he found them shut and
curled up.
Wondering why, he said, "I suppose God
has shut them up not to let burglars see them
and get them. "
When the sun shines on the falling rain,
every Scotch child knows that "the fairies
are baking"; but a succession of such
showers raised a serious problem in the
vexed question of supply and demand.
"What can they be doing with all the
bread? "
"I doot they'll be goin' to give a party the
nicht," was the ingenious solution.
We Scotch cannily say, "I doubt," when
no doubt whatever is meant to be under-
stood.
A little girl from an orphanage was spending
her holidays in the country. She was listening
to a wood-pigeon, and inquired, "Is it singing
or crying? "
One little friend gave us a pretty idea.
When told she was going to be taught music,
she asked if she would have to play all those
little birds sitting on the telegraph-wires.
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
Does not the idea recall the lines "written
for gentle souls who love music," in "The
Professor at the Breakfast Table," on the
music of one of the first pianos ever played
in the hearingof the children of the Western
world?
Just as the " Jubilate" in threaded whisper dies,
"Open it! open it, lady I" the little maiden cries
(For she thought 'twas a singing creature caged
in a box she heard),
"Open it! open it, lady! and let me see the bird! "
One stormy day my little girl came to me
and said, "Come, mother, and listen to the
likkle voice in the drawing-room door. "
It was the wind whistling through the key-
hole.
She always says in her prayers, "Bless
Thy little lambs goodrttight. "
A child of about five was staying at the
house where at that time I most frequently
visited. She was put to bed one evening with-
out the curtains of her room being drawn. It
was one of those nights when clouds come over
and veil the sky and then disperse. Some one
went up to see whether the dear little girl was
asleep.
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
She said, "The stars all went in just now,
and then came out shining brighter than ever;
I think they must have gone to look at
Christ. "
Sometimes the unconscious mingling of
prosaic and romantic produces a quaint effect.
Carpet-laying had been engrossing attention
during the day, and the star-points, appearing
one after another in the evening sky, seemed
familiar.
"Oh! look at the gold tacks in the carpet
of heaven! " We laughed, but one quoted
softly:
. . . Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold.
So true it is that the greatest is ever most
akin to the childlike.
But Anaximenes, without the help of a carpet,
came to the same conclusion regarding the
heavenly bodies four and a half centuries
before the Star of Bethlehem stood still
over the manger. They were designed
for ornament, he thought, and nailed, as
it were, like studs in the crystalline
sphere.
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
My little girl of three looked up at the sky
bright with stars and asked, "What are these
pretty little shining things? " When told they
were the stars, she said," Oh, I thought it was
the moon's eyes. "
A little London girl, on seeing a half moon
in Edinburgh when out one night, exclaimed,
"Your moon is not nearly so round as ours. "
Somewhere in Plutarch--in his " Morals," I
think--the passage occurs: "No man is
an exile where there is the same fire,
water, and air. . . . We should certainly
laugh at his folly who should affirm that
there was a better moon at Athens than
at Corinth; and yet we in a sort commit
the same error when, being in a strange
country, we look upon the earth, the sea,
the air, the heavens doubtfully. "
"God's blue tent spreads equally over all. "
Flossie was enjoying her first visit to the
seaside, when one morning her mother told
her she would have to go into the town instead
of to the shore. "Oh, mother," said Flossie,
"and all that beautiful water will be wasting. "
"A big baff, and p'enty of soap in it," said a
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
tiny maiden, looking from the deck of the
steamer at the foaming water round the
paddles.
One remembers the description of Charoba's
childhood in Landor's " Gebir ":
Past are three summers since she first beheld
The ocean ; all around the child await
Some exclamation of amazement here:
She coldly said, her long-lasht eyes abased,
"Is this the mighty ocean? is this all? "
Little Ronald, aged eight, was at the sea-
side, and one day exclaimed, "Auntie dear,
don't you think the waves are funny? "
"How, dear? What do you mean ? " said
auntie.
"Why, the top part comes faster than the
bottom part, and then it tumbles over and
goes sliding down the hill all white. "
Tennyson noticed the same "funny" phe-
nomenon, and described it as
the curl'd white of the coming wave
Glass'd in the slippery sand before it breaks,
and as the great waters which break
Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves
Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud.
Bunnie, aged seven, was staying in the
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
country, and took a great deal of interest in
the baby lambs.
"I suppose, mummie," he said one day
wonderingly, "that God puts the wool on
them so that when they fall down out of
heaven they do not hurt themselves!