No More Learning

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? "
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
Children are very quick to adapt new ideas
to their own purposes. The following borrows
its touch of pathos from a tragic background.
A young Englishman of twenty-one had just
died of yellow fever in a foreign hotel, casting
a hushed gloom over the other residents. Two
small boys were playing horses outside in the
verandah; the elder was overheard to say,
"Come on, Frank; put on the reins and I'll
drive you to an early grave. "
Reading in the Kindergarten is often a source
of amusement to the teacher.
"What is a nib? " asked a little reader of
four years.
"Oh, I know ! " said Dick; "it is that thing
that there isn't when you buy a pen," an ex-
planation that all the little ones seemed to
understand by experience.
On asking a child to tell me the name of the
mouth of a volcano, I received the answer,
after some hesitation, "The chimney-pot of
the world! "
"Aunty," said my small nephew, "dolet me
give a penny to that poor man pretending a
leg! " (He had a cork leg. )
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
The directness of a child does not alwaysgrasp
the meaning of " chaffing," to use a slang term
for a sort of good-humoured banter.
Harold heard his father chaffing his mother
one day about household expenses.
He listened for some minutes in silence,
then he burst out, "You are an 'obzexionable"
husband, pappa! "
My little friend Teddy, the less-than-four-
year-old son of a Wesleyan minister, had been
greatly interested in the construction of a
martin's nest outside his father's study window,
and had made many inquiries concerning it.
He thus reproduced his newly acquired know-
ledge of the habits of different birds. "Do
you know that the swallows go away in winter,
but the sparrows belong to this circuit? "
At the time of the first outbreak of influenza,
about three years ago, many fatal cases
occurred where a tiny nephew of mine lived,
and he saw the frequent funeral cortiges pass
the house.
One day his mother, though having a cold,
was going out, when the little boy (aged four)
said, "Mother, do take care of your cold, or
you will make a funeral of yourself. "
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A little boy, when describing his baby sister
and recounting her many virtues to a lady
friend, concluded by saying, "She is just an
Amen baby. "
"And what kind of baby may that be? "
inquired the lady.
"She holds up her little hands so! Like
what the minister does at the blessing,"
exultingly replied the proud brother.
A little girl living in a country village was in
the habit of hearing very frequently from her
mother's lips the expression, "Well, that is a
miracle! " If her possessions, her spectacles
or her knitting needles--laid down in one
place--were shortly afterwards found in
another, having apparently travelled there
when left by themselves in that astonishing
way with which we are all familiar, she would
make use of the above expression, or when
in perplexity it would fall from her lips.
One day when the inspector was examining
the school he asked, "What is a miracle? "
The little one instantly put up her hand and
replied with great confidence, " Something that
mother does not understand. "
"Sleep," said a small boy of eight, "is a
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
kind of rest what comes over you, and some-
times it makes a thickle noise. "
The same boy, on being asked what a
character was, replied after a moment's
thought, "I should think it was a dictionary
of our actions while we are on earth. "
A. once came running in from the green-
house and gave me a leaf, and he said, "Look
what a lovely 'temper ' leaf it is! " It was off
the passion-Rower.
Reefer jackets used some years ago to be
called pilot jackets: my sister had one. When
she was going out for a walk one day she
asked, "Shall I put on my Crucifixion jacket? "
"What do you mean? " said mother.
"Why, my Crucifixion jacket! "
"Oh! I suppose you mean your pilot
jacket! "
"Well, pilot [Pilate]! I knew it had some-
thing to do with the Crucifixion. "
The novel interpretations they constantly
put upon words--so familiar to their elders as
to make the latter think all explanation totally
unnecessary--are often most comical. Two
little lads were heard, one Saturday night,
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
singing lustily and with particular emphasis the
opening lines of the hymn beginning
Ere another Sabbath's close,
Ere again we seek repose.
Their mother suggested that this was a hymn
more suitable for Sunday than for Saturday
night--to their great astonishment. "But,
mother," they protested, "on Saturday night
you air our clothes for Sunday, while we seek
repose,"--the words, as they rendered them,
being
Air another Sabbath's clothes!
Air again: we seek repose!
Father had a great many canaries, and spoke
of selling some of them. Charlie looked up
horrified. "Mother," he said, catching his
breath, "will daddy cut the poor little dickies
into halves? "
"No," replied mother, laughing; "why do
you ask? "
"Well, mother, he said they would be 45.
a-piece, and I thought he was going to chop
them up. "
Children mix up their knowledge in rather
a distracting way sometimes. One little girl,
on being asked how she knew a horse was an
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animal, replied, "Because it has four equal
sides and four right angles. "
The same child declared people could live
without air. "For," she said, "I know a
gentleman that has none on the top of him. "
A little girl of our acquaintance was repeating
her prayer:
This night when I lie down to sleep,
I give my soul to Christ to keep.
On reaching this point she looked up in her
father's face and asked the startling question,
"Will I give Him my heels too? "
On one occasion Lillie, seeing a bow on the
back of her mother's mantle, remarked proudly,
"I have a bow on my mantelpiece. "
"Mr. Weston has just been with us a year
to-day," observed a widowed mother to her
children, in reference to a boarder who had
taken up his abode with them to augment the
family purse.
"Three cheers for Mr. Weston, mother! "
cried the eldest boy.
"And three sofas too, muvver," shouted
three-year-old Alec, waving his cap in the air.
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An apple-charlotte and a plum pudding were
on the table, and the children were asked
which they would have. Charlotte chose
apple-charlotte. "Not apple-Charlotte," said
baby Charlie when it came to his turn, "but
p\um-me /"
"What did you have for dinner to-day? "
a mother asked her little son.
"Indigestion," was the prompt reply.
Little Cousin John's birthday was a source
of mysterious trouble to him. When the
other children spoke gleefully of their birth-
days the look on Johnny's face became very
sorrowful: "Oh, John's birfday fell down;
John's birfday tummle over! "
None of us could guess what terrible mis-
hap it was that was disturbing his little soul,
till one day he murmured sadly, "John's
birfday knocked over! " Then the light flashed
upon us, and we were able to comfort him.
Johnnie's birthday was in October.
My small boy asked me if the sycamore
tree was called that because it was more sick
than any other tree.
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
Isobel was told to leave something on her
plate for "Mrs. Manners. " "But who is
Mrs. Manners? " asked she, and before any
one could answer, "/ suppose it's the water
that washes the plates. "
Edwin for some years persisted in speaking
of himself in the third person, as " he," never
as "I. "
One very frosty day his mother was warning
him that if he fell down in such weather his little
legs would break like sticks of sealing-wax.
This warning failed to produce the desired
effect, as the child replied, "He likes his little
legs to break like sticks of sealing-wax. "
It is by no means uncommon for the small
person to express a special liking for
the disaster which is foretold as the
certain result of some act of self-indul-
gence or disobedience. The peculiar
form of speech referred to in this last
Saying is also of frequent occurrence,
though probably less common and much
less perplexing than the habit of saying
"What I'm going to do? " when the
speaker means "What are you going to
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
do," and "Come and kiss you," when he
means "Come and kiss me. " It seems to
me that there is a very natural explana-
tion of this transference of the pronouns.
A child is addressed as "you," and he
accepts the word as a sort of name, so
that when he speaks of himself he very
properly uses the name in which he is
spoken to: "'You' did this"; "'You'
loves mamma. " Similarly he hears his
elders speaking of themselves as "I";
obviously that must be their name, and he
is quite logical when he addresses them
as "I ": "Where I'm going to? [where
are you going to? ] You [I] go with I
[you]. "
It is often at a very early age that we find
the little people tackling the mysteries of
time and space, the enigmas of birth and
death, the marvels of heaven, and a crowd
of other questions to which we ourselves
shall find no answer on this side of the
grassy gate and the dusty way. In all
these matters the children's views take
the colour of the parents' teaching.
Harry, aged three, was of a very inquiring
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? CHILDREN'S SAYINGS
mind. He was always wanting to know
"where yesterday had gone," and "why did
counting never end? "
"Do our souls never die? " asked Jack.
"No, dear. " "But wouldn't they if you put
them in water? "
One day my nephew, aged four, was playing
with toys on the hearthrug, I reading by his
side. Suddenly he raised his head and asked,
"Auntie, where was I before I was born?