No More Learning

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.
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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
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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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? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:06 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1. $b240617 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 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
59
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-24 15:06 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc1.