MY FRIENDS' CHILDREN.

STORIES throwing a chance gleam of light upon the work.. ings of the childish mind are always popular, but few people attempt to analyse and classify them, or to draw any lessons with regard to methods of education and the order in which the various branches of study should be taken. The child whose inept comment or ludicrous question reveals mental confusion and grotesque or wholly inadequate concep- tions is likely to be considered exceptionally muddle-headed, whereas the exceptional point is in the self-betrayal.

"Little girls think a great deal," one child told me, "but they don't say what. they think." Many children are accounted clever simply because they keep their own counsel. A child who at six years of age could " define what is meant" by most of the terms used in geography said years afterwards that she had always pictured peninsulas as being just big enough to stand on, while an isthmus could be mastered by a long stride.

Probably one of the chief sources of confusion is the pre- mature teaching of subjects which cannot be comprehended by children except in the vaguest manner ; with the amiable intention of simplifying the difficulty, the teacher makes use of highly metaphorical language and purely fanciful analogies, and thus piles Pelion on Ossa. The child at once proceeds to interpret the metaphors literally. A boy of four asked, " What does Satan sit on P How can he stand a chair in a bottomless pit ?" The nurse, an intelligent woman, feared that she might only make confusion worse confounded if she offered any explanation, and the boy decided, to his own com- plete satisfaction, that Satan sat on perches projecting from the sides of the pit.

Fortunately most children's hearts are so hard that they never shrink from any dogma unless for personal reasons. It is only the exceptional child who is torn by pity or troubled by a sense of abstract injustice. In a book called "Cobwebs to Catch Little Flies " (a grim pleasantry !), which I have not seen since I was very young, there is a characteristic conversa- tion between Frank and his mamma, who meet the funeral of; a boy.

Frank : "Is the boy in the pit ? "

Mamma : " I fear so."

Frank : "I hope I shall not go to the pit." Frank was merely a human child: his detestable sister Ann was so good that she never suffered even n personal qualm. The subject of prayer offers great difficulties, though perhaps not to children of as practical a nature as the hero of the•fol- lowing story. A nervous boy of eight or nine told his mother at the luncheon table that he had swallowed a marble, and felt so much frightened that he "had been praying all the morning that it might not kill him."

" Stupid," muttered a younger brother contemptuously. "You are very naughty, Sidney," said their mother, "I think Norman was quite right."

" No, he is stupid, mother."

"Well, what would you have done P "

"Why, I should have been like Daniel—pray three times and ha' done with it."

Much perplexity arises from changes which have taken place in the meaning of words. One most intelligent girl understood the petition " Neither reward us after our iniqui- ties " as " Have nothing to do with us because of our sine," and another interpreted " generally necessary to salvation " as " usually, but not always," while " endeavour ourselves " is seldom recognized to be a reflexive verb. Sometimes, espe- cially in poetry, one part of speech is mistaken for another with curious results. A girl paraphrased the line "Rose a nurse of ninety years " as " A nurse of ninety whose name was Rose." I forget the girl's age, but as she obstinately clung to the interpretation and then suddenly yielded to the argument that, if her belief were correct, the punctuation of the sentence would be different, her education must have been fairly advanced. I said, " You remind me of the High School girl who thought that There is a green hill far away, without a city wall' meant that there was a hill unprovided with a wall."

" Well, doesn't it ? " she replied.

There is also a strong tendency to give an obvious explana- tion of words. A child misreading amen at the end of several hymns suddenly asked, " Why does it never say a—woman ? Don't women write hymns P " Drawing rash conclusions from very imperfect knowledge is an opening for curious errors. A London child, seeing a muzzled calf, a creature so young and feeble that it could scarcely stagger along the road, exclaimed with fearful joy, " My ! mustn't it be fierce!"

A little girl, who knew, perhaps, twenty words of French, said hopefully, " Well, one thing, French is a very short language." I asked how she had arrived at this cheering conclusion, and she pointed to the list of words at the head of her exercise, " It says encore means still, yet, again, and malade is sick, ill. Well, that is five words to two." Another child said of a rigidly respectable person, "I don't like him : I think he drinks." Asked what could make her imagine such a thing, she simply replied, "He wears his hat so far over his eyes."

A boy of nine, who had never previously witnessed a collec- tion in church, was deeply interested, and, when the bags were finally borne off by clergy and choir in procession, proclaimed in a loud whisper of sympathetic excitement, "Now they're going to share it out !" A sister, just half his age, described the scene in these terms : " When it was nearly time to come out they banded round a bag of money, and aunt got sixpence, but they didn't let me put my hand in. Before that an old lady held out a bag to me, and there was a sweet in it. I suppose only the biggest ones get money." The same child was unaccustomed to the ceremony of saying grace, and, on returning from a brief visit that she had paid to some little friends, told her sister, "Mrs. F. is a funny woman. At dinner there was a great high pile of plates in front of her, and before we began she stooped her head down and said something to the plates, but I couldn't hear what it was."

Often the tendency to make excuses is strong, and the defence more ingenious than true. A boy of eight, when asked why he had eaten all the plums that had been given him instead of sharing them with a younger girl with whom

he had been playing, promptly replied, " I thought they would make her it Two imaginative children called to account

for wilful damage done in the course of a " make-believe " game as kings, queens, headsman, &c., protested, " You must have some reel-ality." I believe that the defence had been supplied by a third and slightly older child, but it had been eagerly adopted.

Difference in age, however trifling, is made to account for everything. A boy of seven, after two years' instruction was reproached with not knowing the alphabet, while a play- fellow could read fluently. He knew that the difference in their age was just six weeks, but immediately protested, " She's older than me."

A little girl was found catching and killing flies, and was gravely reproved by her mother. " It is naughty and cruel. God made the flies. You could not make them."

" Well, God's older than I am!"

A year later she strongly objected to learning to read and write. " What's the use ? When I grow up I shall only be a mamma or a servant."

A boy of nine and a girl of seven were sent to church alone, and on their return were asked, "What was the text ? "

The boy hesitated and stammered, replying finally, "I did know it, I really did, but I've forgotten."

" Oh, for shame, Willy ! " cried his sister, " You know you never asked."

Kings and queens, and royalty generally, are the subject of many fond illusions among children. A little girl was dis- tressed and shocked because I spoke of the late Queen as having worn a bonnet, but a boy's belief as to a special prerogative of princes was far more curious. For the first time in his life he had seen a prince, and on his return home a younger sister asked eagerly, "How big was he—as big as you ? "

"You stupid! Why, don't you know that princes are born grown up F" False logic is a constant source of error, as when one child " mothered " an unpopular aunt on an orphan cousin, arguing " My mother is your aunt, so my aunt must be your mother," reasoning which reduced her opponent to tears of rage when she failed to detect the fallacy while abhorring the apparently inevitable conclusion.

A boy of four, having slipped one mistaken premise into his argument, was scandalized by the conclusion he drew, not that he considered such conduct wrong, but so very unusual as to cast doubts upon his parents' wisdom. He was born a year and a day after their marriage, and on hie fourth birth- day was heard muttering to himself, "Well, I do call it yum "What is rum, darling " asked his mother. "It was your wedding-day yesterday and it's my birthday to-day." " Yes ; why not ? " " Well, I always thought that when people married they waited a little time before they buyed a baby. I do call it yam to buy one the very day after! " Children conceive all life in the forms familiar to them. A little girl asked me, "Who takes the birds' fedders off " " When / What do you mean? " " I mean when they does to bed."

Another of three-and-a-half was told that her father was coming home. He had been on foreign service for three years she had heard of him constantly and had been taught to pray' for him, but evidently it had never entered her little brain to try to imagine what kind of a creature he might be. He arrived a little earlier than he was expected and found her alone in the hall. She gazed at him for a moment with the most intense surprise, and then scrambled upstairs crying, "Mamma! Papa's a man!"

Limited imagination accounts for much of childish hard- heartedness. A little boy was over-load in his expressions of delight at a military funeral that was passing the house, and his mother, trying to check him, said, "Poor Major — has left children as young as you and Lily. What would you do if you lost your father ? "

He turned a radiant face on her, " 0 mamma ! We'd put his cocked hat and sword on a. coffin and have a lovely funeral Much better than this."

A certain literalness of mind accounts for another class e..1 children's sayings. An old gentleman told me that one day when he was about six his schoolmaster gave him an apple as a reward for a well-written copy, and he said, " Thank you," forgetting to add " sir." " Thank you what ?" asked the master severely. " Thank you, cat, or thank you, dog P" "Thank yam, dog," he replied after anxious thought, and was whipped for impertinence. He said he honestly believed that he was bound to accept one of the suggested words, and chose dog because it was masculine.

There are unsuspected gaps in the knowledge of even the cleverest children. I was seriously told by a successful student

of Euclid that Q.E.D. stood for " quite enough demonstrated," and a. girl who had passed with honours in divinity sighed over the perversity of her brothers and said resignedly,, " As the Bible tells us, ' A brother is made for affliction.' " I am con- vinced, however, that most of the "howlers " heard in schools do not originate with the dull children who utter them, but have been prompted by mischievous companions anxious to test their credulity. One public-school boy confessed to me that he and his friends were in the habit of enlivening their school hours in this way, and were especially proud of having induced one of their dupes to say that Cleopatra's needle was an instrument formerly used by dentists.

The youngest child in whom I ever observed a sense of humour was a little Welshman, still in petticoats. Turning the corner sharply, I caught him in the act of throwing stones at my dog, and said, " Why do you waste your time frighten- ing a poor little dog who does no harm to anyone ? if you were a brave bay you would wait until a lion came round the corner and frighten him." He seemed amused, and replied, chuckling, "I fink the h'lion would fighter' me ! "

The instinct of self-preservation is sometimes rather amusingly displayed. Two brothers of seven and nine, sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons of men who had seen much active service, were playing together. "Shall you go into- the Service when you grow up P " asked the younger boy. " No there might be a war." " Oh, well, I shall. You see, if a war came on, I could easy get retired !"

A little boy of about the same age and with a similar family history displayed a very different spirit. He was playing soldiers with some other boys, and he and his brother were on the losing aide. His brother, tired out, lay down and proceeded to die. This was according to rule, but his junior thought it was done too soon, and prodding him vigorously with his wooden sword shouted, " Get up, get up ! Have another dig before you die!"

Excessive self-esteem and a morbid. sensitiveness account for many strange stories told of children.. A little girl of eight at a garden party was talking of a spotted dog in English which was curiously broken for a child of her age,. and a young man said teasingly, " Was it a spotted dog or a dotted sprog ? " The child rushed home, mad with rage, and flung herself on her grandfather, who was dozing over a news- paper, screaming, " Tall him out, dranpapa, tall him out! S'oot him, s'oot him dead—he laughed at me !"

As duels were out of date even in her grandfather's youth, it is difficult to imagine where she could have heard the expression or how she could have so promptly decided that it was an approved method of avenging an. impertinence. A child scarcely half her age, and one of a. large family, had an overweening sense of her own importance. One day, on a public beach, she asked with an air of ineffable disdain, " Who are those children standing between me and the sea ? "

Sometimes, though I think rarely,, children have the keen insight with which they are. credited. A girl of seven asked a lady with whom she was staying, " Do you love me ? " Before she could reply the child's mother exclaimed, "I don't think you need ask that, dear; is she not extremely kind to you ?

" Yes, but can't people be very kind and yet not like you ? That's what I want to know.'" After she had Ieft her hostess said to me, " What a very good child! Everyone said how good she was." I assented ; and she calmly continued "If we had not been.far better, don't you think people would have knocked our heads off PI

A boy who had had more experience of both systems than should rightly have fallen to any one person told we that he preferred "licking" to " jawing." I asked why; and he explained: "It's so much simpler. Either you how/

or you don't. If you howl, the man leaves off because

he thinks you've had.enough, and if you don't howl he leaves off for fear you've had too much, and he's quite satisfied either

way. But when it's sawing, you don't know what's expected

of you. If your say nothing, it's sulks; if you say anything,, it's insolence; if you squeeze out a. tear you're a crocodile ;

and if you don't, you're hardened. I dare say there is a kind of look that would be the right thing if only one could put it on."

The " satisfied" schoolmaster reminded me of an affectionate but somewhat peppery mother much tried by small means, hard work, and had health.

"Do you really think it doesyour children any good to slap them ?" I asked. She pretended to consider the matter for a moment, and then her eyes twinkled: "What you have to think of is the piaci it ices. me I."' M. LeAsa.