Part 10

In an Ayrshire town, immediately after the Whitsunday term a year or two ago, a female teacher asked her class of little ones to be sure all of them and bring their new addresses to her on the morrow, as these were required for the re-adjustment of the register. "Please, mem," blurted out a wee fellow in petticoats, "my mither says I'm no' to get ony mair dresses. She's gaun to mak' a suit for me oot o' my faither's auld breeks."

Sunday school stories are not inferior to those of the week-day seminary in their irresistible fun and drollery.

A Sunday school teacher asked her scholars to learn an appropriate text to say as they gave in their pennies to the next collection. The first was--"He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord"; and all went right until it came to the last boy, who, reluctantly dropping his penny into the box, said--to the great amazement of teachers and scholars--"The fool and his money are soon parted!"

As an example of the error of talking figuratively to those who do not appreciate, and who are apt to take everything literally, a story is worth telling. The respected superintendent of a Sunday school had told his boys that they should endeavour to bring their neighbours to the school, saying that they should be like a train--the scholar being the engine, and his converts the carriages. Judge of his surprise when, next Sunday, the door opened during lessons, and a little boy, making a noise like an engine, ran in, followed by half-a-dozen others in single file at his back! He came to a halt before the superintendent, who asked the meaning of it all. The naive answer was--"Please, sir, I'm the engine, and them's the carriages."

A Sabbath school teacher, at the finish of a lesson on "The Fall," asked--"Now, children, what lesson can we learn from the story of Adam and Eve? Well, Johnnie?" Johnnie--"Never believe what your wife says."

A lady asked one of the children in her class, "What was the sin of the Pharisees?" "Eating camels, ma'am," was the reply. The little girl who answered had read that the Pharisees "strained at gnats and swallowed camels." "In what condition was the patriarch Job at the end of his life?" questioned a teacher of a stolid-looking boy. "Dead," was the quiet response.

"What is the outward and visible sign in baptism?" asked a lady. There was silence for some seconds, and then a girl broke in triumphantly with, "The baby, please, mem."

The Rev. David Macrae tells that in a Brooklyn Sunday school a small boy was asked the question, "Who was the first man?" and, with characteristic American cocksureness, he immediately replied, "General Washington." The teacher smiled, then asked--"Did you never hear of Adam?" "Why, yes," responded the child, "I've heard of Adam; but I didn't know you were counting foreigners."

Recently, in a Sunday school in Scotland, a little boy, who had been transferred to a new class, was asked on arrival if he had had the Shorter Catechism. For a moment he looked puzzled, and then replied--"I'm no sure, mem, until I ask my mither; but I ken I've had the measles."

Elsewhere, a teacher had been carefully explaining the parable of the Prodigal Son, and that done, she proceeded to put questions. All went well until near the close, when she asked, "Now, tell me who was not pleased to see the prodigal son when he came home," and to her consternation got the reply, "Please, ma'am, the fatted calf."

In a Sunday school in Ayrshire, attended chiefly by miners' children, the lesson for the day had been the parable of the ten wise and ten foolish virgins, and the teacher asked--"Can any one of you tell me why the virgins' lamps went out?" "I ken," immediately responded the dullest boy in the class; "it was the wicks that was needin' pykin'."

And the story is hoary with age of how a teacher, when the lesson had been read which bore on Jacob's dream, invited questions from the class, and how one little fellow asked--"Why did the angels need a ladder for ascending and descending when they had wings and could flee?" The teacher was nonplussed, but got out of the difficulty by saying--"Perhaps some of the other boys can answer." "I think I ken," ventured a little fellow, whose father was a bird fancier, "maybe they wad be moultin' at the time."

His solutions may be extraordinary, but nothing, you see, can baffle the young wit. It was again in a Sunday school that a teacher had been instructing a class in the relative positions of man and the lower animals in the scale of intelligence, and wishing to test how the lesson had been imbibed, she asked--"Now, what is next to man?" and got the answer promptly--"His shirt."

"What is meant by a 'hireling'?" was asked of a class in a day-school. "You are a hireling," responded a little fellow; "you are hired to teach us."

Giving a reading lesson to his class in the presence of an inspector, a teacher asked his boys what was meant by conscience--a word that had occurred in the course of the reading--and the class having been duly crammed for the occasion answered as one boy--"An inward monitor." "But what do you understand by an inward monitor?" put in the inspector. To this further question, only one boy announced himself ready to respond, and his triumphantly given answer was--"A hironclad, sir."

Their definitions are at all times interesting, if not constantly reliable. After a reading of Gray's "Elegy" by a fourth standard class, the boys were asked what was meant by "fretted vaults," and one youth replied--"The vaults in which these poor people were buried; their friends came and fretted over them." Asked what he understood by "Elegy," another boy in the same class answered--"Elegy is some poetry wrote out for schools to learn, like Gray's 'Elegy.'"

Asked to describe a kitten, a boy, after a moment's thought, replied--"A kitten is remarkable for rushing like mad at nothing whatever, and stopping before it gets there."

Another boy's definition of a lie was probably the fruit of good experience. "A lie," said he, "is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord, but a very present help in time of trouble."

Asked to define the expression, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." "It just means," responded a little fellow, "that the evil committed at the present day is quite sufficient without any more."

In a sixth standard examination, a vacuum was recently described as "an empty space without anything in it;" and a compass, at the same time, was explained as "a tripod with a round or circular box surmounting it, which always points due north."

A Government inspector not long ago gave the following in a list of historical and other "facts," elicited from boys under examination:--

"Of whom was it said 'He never smiled again'?" "William Rufus, and this after he was shot by the arrow."

"My favourite character in English history is Henry VIII., because he had eight wives and killed them all."

"The cause of the Peasants' Revolt was that a shilling poultice should be put on everybody over sixteen."

"Henry VIII. was a very good king. He liked plenty of money, he had plenty of wives, and died of ulcers in the legs." "Edward III. would have been king of France if his mother had been a man."

"Doomsday Book.--A book signifying that each man should have seven feet of land for a grave."

"Alexander the Great was born in the absence of his parents."

"What followed the murder of Becket?" "Henry II. received wacks with a birch."

"What is a watershed?" "A shed for keeping water in."

"A watershed is a house between two rivers so that a drop of water falling on one side of the roof runs into one river, and a drop on the other side goes into the other river."

"The battle of Waterloo was fought off Cape Trafalgar. Nelson led up one squadron and Collingwood the other. When it was over Wellington rode over the field by moonlight, and met Blucher, the French general, and they shook hands and were friends ever after."

"The Feudal System lies between the Humber and the Thames."

"Caractacus was a Roman Emperor who had conquered Britain. He had to abandon it shortly afterwards because it was overrun by the Picts and the Scots."

"The principal products of Kent are Archbishops at Canterbury."

"The chief clause in Magna Charta was that no free man should be put to death or imprisoned without his own consent."

"What and where are the Pyramids?" "The Pyramids is a kind of night-lights as is generally used in the bed-rooms, but you can get Clark's as well." "Where were the Kings of England crowned?" "On their heads."

"What were the most important Feudal dues?" "Friendship, courtship, marriage."

"What do you know of Dermot?" "Dermot's daughter married Magna Charta. Dermot himself married Strongbow."

"What do you know of Dryden and Buckingham?" "Dryden and Buckingham were at first friends, but soon became contemporaries."

"What is Milton's chief work?" "Milton wrote a sensible poem called the 'Canterbury Tails.'"

"The gamut is a musical scale. The name is derived from gamut or catgut, the material from which the strings of musical instruments used to be made."

"An optimist is a man who looks after your eyes, and a pessimist is a man who looks after your feet."

"A man who looks on the bright side of things is called an optimist, and one who looks on the dull side is called a pianist."

Dr. Charles Wilson, in his general report on the Scottish Training Colleges, gives several curious answers which he had received from candidates and pupil-teachers. A young lady in commenting on the proverb, "Penny wise and pound foolish," wrote--"This proverb clearly shows that for every wise and good action a man does, he will commit two hundred and forty foolish bad ones."

Under examination by Dr. John Ker, a boy wrote regarding Oliver Cromwell--"Oliver Cromwell's eyes were of a dark grey, his nose was very large and of a deep, red colour, but underneath it was a truly religious soul." Another wrote--"By the Declaration of Indulgence people were allowed to worship God in their own way. Seven Bishops refused to do so. They were accordingly put on their trial and found not guilty."

Another declared that the Salic Law says--"No one can be made King who was descended from a woman."

Speaking there of Oliver Cromwell, recalls the story of a boy's school essay which the late Mr. W. E. Gladstone was fond of telling--albeit, the great Commoner had no very lively sense of humour. The "G.O.M.'s" comically-mixed youthful historian wrote--"Oliver Cromwell began his career by cutting off the head of his king, and when he was dying he said, 'Had I served my God with half the zeal I have served my king, he would not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies.'"

I have examples of other boys' essays not less surprising and entertaining.

"The horse," wrote a youthful Cuvier, in an essay on the "friend of man," "is a useful creacher. It eats corn, it is a sort of square animal with a leg at each corner, and has a head at one end and a tail at the other."

Here is a boy's essay on "Breath," well calculated to almost take any one's breath away--"Breath is made of air. We breathe with our lungs, our livers, and our kidneys. If it wasn't for our lights and our breath we should die when we slept. Our breath keeps life agoing through the nose when we are asleep. Boys that stay in a room all day should not breathe. They should wait till they get outdoors. Boys in a room make carbonicide. Carbonicide is more poisonous than mad dogs. A heap of soldiers was in a black hole in India and carbonicide got into that black hole and killed nearly every one afore morning. Girls kill the breath with corsets that squeeze the diagram. Girls can't run or holler like boys because their diagram is squeezed too much. If I was a girl, I'd rather be a boy so I can run and holler and have a good big diagram."

The next looks rather knowing for a lad of eleven-and-a-half; but Dr. T. J. Macnamara, M.P., in an article on "Children's Witticisms," contributed to the _New Liberal Review_, vouches for its authenticity. The subject reveals itself in the work: "What I expect to do in my holidays is the greater part of the time to mind the baby. Two years and a half old. Just old enough to run into a puddle or to fall downstairs. Oh! what a glorious occupation, my aunt or Sunday-school teacher would say. But it is all very well for them; they ought to have a turn with him. I am going to have a game at tying doors, tying bundles of mud in paper, and then drop it on the pavement. I shall buy a bundle of wood and tie a piece of cord to it, and when some one goes to pick it up, lo! it has vanished--not lost, but gone before. I shall go butterfly-catching, and catch some fish at Snob's Brighton (Lea Bridge). I shall finish up by having a whacking, tearing my breeches, giving a boy two black eyes, and then wake up on Monday morning refreshed and quite happy to make the acquaintance of Mr.----'s cane."

Dr. M. quotes the following as well--the genuineness of which he also guarantees:--"Man goes fishing, takes his rod and enough tackle to make a telegraph wire, and starts on his piscatorial expedition. He arrives, and happy man is he if he has not forgot something, a hook, his bait, or his float. He sits there, apparently contented; he catches a frog or some other fine specimen of natural history, and a cold, and a jolly good roasting from his bitter (_sic_) half, when he arrives with some mackerel which he had bought at the fish-monger's. He, poor man, did not know that they were sea-fish, but his wife did. When juveniles go fishing, they take a willow, their ma's reel of best six cord, a pickle jar, and a few worms, and proceed to the New River quite happy. When they arrive they catch about fifty (a small thousand, they call it), and are thinking of returning home, when a gent, with N.R. on his hat, and a good ash stick in his hand, comes up, ''Ullo, there,' says he, 'what are you doing there?' 'Fishing, sir,' answer they meekly. The man then takes away their fish and rod, and gives them some whales instead (on their back). And they return home sadder but wiser boys."

I can vouch myself for the genuineness of the next example, recently copied _verbatim_ from the original manuscript in the possession of a friend in the teaching profession in Glasgow. The general subject had been "Athletic Sports," and a boy wrote:--"Athletic sports is very useful football especially it strengthens the mussles all sports is good for the helth for some people I think the best game is rugby there is more fun in it than anything else I will give a description of football the Rangers have the best men that ever stood in the football park there is one man I know and that is Chas. Raisback and he is center and a nother good player is Bobby M'Coll his wright wing and J. Drummond is a nother good player I think this is all about athletic sports I have got to say and I will never forget the good wee rangers the result was on Saturday Rangers 2 Morton 1. Good old Rangers." Isn't it beautiful? To the question, "With what weapon did Samson slay the Philistines?" the correct answer has already been given, or extracted, here; but I recall another, more ingenious, from a boy, who replied, "With the _axe_ of the Apostles."

"What are you talking about there?" demanded a teacher, addressing himself to the loquacious son of a railway porter. But the teacher received no response, and was obliged to ask another lad who sat next the delinquent, "What was George talking about?" "Please, sir, he was saying as his father's trousers is sent down to Brighton when they gets old, and they's made into _sugar_ there, and that's how 'tis sugar's gone down."

Home influences appeared in the answer of a child, whose father was a strong teetotaller, to the query, "Do you know the meaning of syntax?" "Yes, syntax is the dooty upon spirits."

In reply to the question, "Why do we cook our food?" one child replied: "There are five ways of cooking potatoes. We should die if we eat our food raw." A second pupil wrote: "Food digested is when we put it into our mouths, our teeth chews it, and our mouth drops it down into our body. We should not eat so much bone-making food as flesh-making and warmth-giving foods, for, if we did, we should have too many bones, and that would make us look funny."

In answer to the question, "Mention any occupations that are injurious to health?" one child's reply was: "Occupations which are injurious to health are carbonic acid gas, which is impure blood." Another responded: "A stone-mason's work is injurious, because when he is chipping, he breathes in all the little chips, and they are taken into the lungs." A third advanced the theory that "A boot-maker's trade is very injurious, because they press the boots against the thorax, and therefore it presses the thorax in, and it touches the heart, and if they do not die, they are cripples for life."

Finally, here is an extract from an essay on "The Moon," which--in defiance of its title--affords some very interesting glimpses of sublunary home life:--"To look at the white moon shinin threw your winder at night, sitting on the edge of the bed, and lissin to your father and mothers knives and forks rattlin on their plates while they are getting their nice suppers, is the prittist site you ever seed. When its liver and hunyens there a having, you can smell it all the way upstairs. It looks very brite and nearly all white. Once when they was a having fried fish and potaters I crept out of my bed-room to the top of the stairs all in the dark, just so as to have a better lissen and a nearer smell. I forget whether there was a moon that night. I don't think as there was, cose I got to the top of the stares afore I knew I was there, and I tumbled right down to the bottom of the stares, a bursting open the door at the bottom, and rolling into the room nearly as far as the supper table. My father thote of giving me the stick for it, but he let my mother give me a bit of fish on some bread, and told me to skittle off to bed again. I am sure there was not no moon, else I should have seed there wasn't a top stare when I put my foot out so slow. I only skratted my left eye and ear a bit with that last bump at the bottom, witch was a hard one, Stares are steeper than girls think, speshilly where the corner is."

CHILDREN'S STORIES.

The editor of a London literary journal was recently inviting men and women in prominent positions in public life to name for publication the books of their childhood. So far as I observed, none of the half-hundred or more who responded gave _Blue Beard_, _Cinderella_, _Little Red Riding Hood_, or any of the others in the same category that follow here. But I am none the less convinced that these old-time favourites, not yet unknown, though familiar to city children in the present generation mainly in their variegated and fantastic Christmas pantomime form, were in Scotland and England alike in the last century more essentially the books of childhood than any others known and read beyond the walls of the school-room. The travelling stationers and packmen carried them in their thousands, in chapbook form, into even the most remote parts of the country, where they were bartered for and explored with avidity. In many quarters, indeed, they were so familiar fifty years ago that the books on occasions could be dispensed with, and the elder members of families would recite the stories from memory for the delectation of the younger fry, when all foregathered in a crescent before the kitchen fire to wear out the long winter evenings. In this manner, under the dim-flickering light of an "oilie cruizie," in a straggling village in Perthshire, did I learn first of Blue Beard and Jack the Giant Killer, and many another hero of chapbook literature. And my experience, I am sure, was by no means singular. Rather, I feel certain that while telling thus my own, I am expressing no less truly the experience of many thousands of men and women now beyond middle life who similarly were born and bred in any rural parish in Scotland. And, oh, the weird fascination of it all! There was no doubting of Blue Beard's reality; no hesitation in accepting as actual every extraordinary feat of Jack the Giant Killer. Both were as real in our innocent imagination as is now the personality of King Edward the Seventh. It never occurred to us then, as it does now, that the story of Blue Beard is only a gory and fantastic parody of the history of Eden--a temptation, a fall, and a rescue. And we had no concern about authorship. We did not know then, as we do now--and as few are yet aware, perhaps--that _Blue Beard_, _Cinderella_, and _Little Red Riding Hood_ were all written by Charles Perrault, a celebrated French literateur and poet, who was born in Paris in 1628, and died there in 1703. And to have been told, as we have recently been, on authority that Perrault's Blue Beard--the Comte Gilles de Rais--was no mere wife-killer (though he was such) but from his youth upwards, in the fifteenth century, a man of exquisite culture, and a soldier under Joan of Arc, would have made for disillusionment so emphatic as to have shred the tale of a serious amount of its blood-curdling charm. As I can still enjoy reading them, it is a real pleasure to embrace here these old-time examples of child literature. Such as follow--and all the more popular will be found in the list--are printed _verbatim_ from the chapbooks now unobtainable, except at a ransom price--and without individual comment--none being required.

BLUE BEARD.

There was, some time ago, a gentleman who was extremely rich: he had elegant town and country houses; his dishes and plates were of gold or silver; his rooms were hung with damask; his chairs and sofas were covered with the richest silks; and his carriages were all magnificently gilt with gold.

But, unfortunately, this gentleman had a blue beard, which made him so very frightful and ugly, that none of the ladies in the neighbourhood would venture to go into his company.

It happened that a lady of quality, who lived very near him, had two daughters, who were both extremely beautiful. Blue Beard asked her to bestow one of them upon him in marriage, leaving to herself the choice which of the two it should be.