18 OCTOBER 1902, Page 17

THE SAYINGS OF CHILDREN.

[To THE Eurroft or THE " SPECTATOR." _I sm.—These "sayings of children" may amuse your readers. I vouch for them all as true Bills. Tommy's grandmother is old-fasbioned and goes to church ; his mother is emancipated. They were staying in a small town where postmen are not

a church with some " grown-ups" one day, employed. Passing said Tommy (aged three), "That's where my granny goes on

lay."-" And doesn't your mother go there too ?"—" No: she doesn't go there."—" Where does she go ? "—" She goes to the postsoffice." Arthur, aged six, had succumbed for the second time to the attractions of an exposed and unprotected take. His mother told him that his first fall ought to have warned him, and pointed the moral of St. Peter and the cock. A deep sigh, a quiver of the lip, and,—" But, mamma, the cock in the back street is dead, and you can't expect me to remember St. Peter with a hen." A little child trying to count the trees from the window of a train exclaimed, "How fast they run; and they've only one leg!" A four-year-old was re!ating with dramatic feeling an assault from her brother, a4ed six. "And he hit me, and he pinched me, and he—" —" Oh, but what did you do to hirn.?"—" I wasn't talking .,bout that." A devoted father, after a day's absence, was met by his two little sons. "Have you been good toys?" Silence. "Have you been good boys ? "—" No, papa; I called grandma a bad word," said five-years-old, turn- ing scarlet. "Is it possible ? What did you call your grandma ?"—" I called her a human being." The father with a mighty effort maintained his gravity, and closed the scene decorously. "I must forgive you for once, but remember, if you ever call your grandmother a human being again I shall have to spank you!" The same little boys were overheard discussing some evidently abstruse subject, when "Baby," aged four, very pronouncedly expressed his opinion. " Oh ! Baby, you don't know anything about it."—" I know as much as you, if I am little."—" Well, then, how much is twice one ?"—" Oh! that's different." A little girl, at a hotel dining-table, broke a profound silence with,—" Mamma, if you had not married papa, what relation would papa be to