No More Learning

"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! "
Two small boys were looking at a picture of
a long-eared rabbit.
"That's a rabbit," said one of them.
"A wabbit! " replied the other scornfully.
"A wabbit indeed! Who ever seed a wabbit
wif wings on his head? "
Another little one was looking at a spider's
web, and asked if the spider could really eat
a fly. On being told it could, he said, "Well,
what would it do with a windmill fly? " (a
daddy longlegs).
Nelly, five years old, watching the flies:
"How does flies sit down, mother? " Address-
ing her three-year-old brother on another
occasion, she observed, "When you get a
bit older I will tell you all about Jesus on the
Cross; you wouldn't understand now, if I did. "
Have you ever taken a town-bred child into
the country for the first time? It is delightful
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
to hear their quaint remarks about everything
they see.
One springtime I was in a wood with a six-
year-old friend of mine, when, to our mutual
delight, we found a thrush's nest. The child
had never seen a bird's egg before, so I
promised to blow one, that she might keep the
shell.
"Oh," she exclaimed in anxious delight,
"shall I see the little bird fly out? "
Ivy, about four, has been to visit her
"Jannie" (grannie) and see the fields where
primroses grow. She lifts her face with a
look of awe to tell you, "And they were
all quite clean! "
A wee Scotch laddie, spending his first night
at a country farmhouse, awoke his mother
early in the morning, saying, "Hark hoo the
hens are callin' on me; I must rise from my
bed and be awa' oot to them. "
The following anecdote may be told without
irreverence of this same little lad, for it was
spoken from the simplicity of his childlike
heart. He was watching some cows lowing
in a meadow, and after their usual manner at
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
every low they stretched their necks upward.
"See, mammy," said the little fellow, "hoo the
coos are lookin' awa' up to Jesus. "
George, aged eight years, visited his grandma
on a cloudy unsettled day last August, and the
following conversation took place:
"We are going to have a storm, grandma. "
"Are we, dear? " replied grandma.
"Yes; that dark cloud is not the lightning
cloud, but that red one underneath it. I like
storms. There's nothing to be afraid of,
grandma, if there's plenty of rain; and I'm
very fond of lightning and I like it forked. "
A wee man of three picked up some lime
berries, and asked if they would grow to trees
if sown; but he said, "Nurse won't lend me
her needles! "
Another time he said, " What is to-morrow?
No, not to-morrow, the next day behind? "
He once remarked, "God does not make the
sky, the puff-puff makes it--it's all smoke. "
Giggums, who was not yet two, was looking
out of the window. Pointing to the sky, he
said, "Train! puff-puff I" I looked out and
saw some trailing white filmy clouds, which
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
he evidently mistook for the steam of an
engine.
Janet was one day requested to ring the
bell for the servant. She rang, but no Mary
appeared.
"Ring again, Janet," her mother said.
She pulled the handle more vigorously, and
we noticed that she was whispering something
to herself.
"What are you saying, Janet? " her mother
asked.
"Oh, mother," she replied, "I was saying,
'The more you ring, the more I won't come. 1
I think that's what Mary is saying to herself
very likely. "
This morning at school one little girl was
asked, "What is this word 'TO'? "
"It 'ooks 'ike a man and a d'um, and the
man is not playing it," was the unexpected
answer. "And oh, auntie, 'ook at dat fat man
wiff his back to anoder d'um ; what is him? "
It was "do. "
Occasionally the small observer's scrutiny
gives rise to embarrassing situations if
people happen to be "touchy. "
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
"Is oo's head c'acked, auntie ? " said little
Marion, aged three.
"I hope not, dear. Why? "
"'Cos dere's a line down de front. "
A little boy went with his parents to have
tea at a friend's house. During the repast
he was observed thoughtfully watching a
lady guest having a plate of cake handed to
her.
To the amusement of all, the admonitory
words then broke from his lips, "Bread first,
cake after. " So he passed on what he himself
had been taught to the grown-ups, who he
thought were equally in need of it.
Molly's candour, if a little embarrassing, is
very refreshing, and her gift of repartee,
though it sometimes leads to grave results in
the way of punishment, is irresistible. One
day she said, in all good faith, to a lady,
"People would think you were young if they
only saw your hair! "
And one day in the schoolroom, when she
was very naughty and stubborn, her governess
told her to come and stand beside her. The
child went, and stood immovable.
"Molly dear," said her governess, "you
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
must answer my questions; it's no use your
standing there with your mouth shut. "
"It's no use me standing here with it open,"
said Molly.
A number of these Sayings fall naturally
under the heading of Language, and they
serve to illustrate the heroic attempts of the
small people to master the speech of their
elders, the very remarkable way in which
they generally succeed in doing so, and the
odd mistakes they occasionally make when
a word has more than a single meaning.
H. was very fond of appropriating the
longest words which he heard.
One day, being sent to play upstairs, his
father, thinking him somewhat quiet, called
out, "What are you doing, my boy? "
At once came back the astonishing answer,
"Only playing with physical things! "
A lively, imaginative girl of eight, talking
with her dolls, made a boy-doll say to a girl-
dolly, " You will write to me sometimes while
you are away, won't you? "
To which the other doll was made to reply,
"Oh yes, with exceeding great joy! "
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
This was overheard by a boy relative, and
great was the teasing our precocious little
maiden received.
But she was also an ardent bible reader for
her age, and soon surprised her friends by
exclaiming, "It was quite right to say 'ex-
ceeding great joy,' because it's in the bible
about the Wise Men. "
When about six years old, Janet was taught
in her geography lessons that "Yarmouth is
celebrated for the curing of herrings. "
"Oh, how funny it must be," she exclaimed,
"to see the little ill herrings sitting round
getting better! "
A wee girl, whose baby sister was teething,
was found pushing a pair of scissors into her
doll's mouth, and looked up to say, "I'm
cutting dolly's teeth. "
When F. was quite tiny, he excused himself
for being a long time getting out of bed by
saying that he " couldn't essicate his foot from
the bed-clothes! "
Another time, hearing a woman talking in
a shrill tone to a man with a very gruff voice,
he remarked, "I call that light and dark, don't
you? "
71
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:06 GMT / http://hdl.