Great Mysteries And Little Plagues Part 6

No. 32. "A little three-year-old," says a neighbor, "was in the habit of helping himself to crackers without leave, by lifting the lid of a tin box, and plunging his little arm in up to the elbow. One day, after listening to stories about rats, he went after a cracker, and hearing a noise that he fancied was made by rats, he scampered back to the sitting-room, with big eyes and a flushed face, and a.s.sured his mother that he wasn't afraid. 'O, muzzer!' said he, 'I ain't afaid o' _wats, but I'se so tired I couldn't lift the cover_!'" How many grown people have you heard guilty of a similar subterfuge. Not afraid, to be sure--not they--but only somewhat hurried, or having just remembered an engagement, as they were about lifting the lid of something dangerous.

No. 33. And here is a case of downright special pleading, worthy of Lord c.o.ke himself, or Saunders, or Theophilus Parsons, or Chitty, or Judge Gould. "Oh, Tommy, that was abominable in you, to eat your little sister's share of the cake!" "Didn't you tell me, ma, that I was always to _take her part_?" said Tommy.

No. 34. "George," said a minister to one of the little boys, who looked as if b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in his mouth, "where is your sister Minnie?"

"Gone to heaven, sir." "What!--is she dead?" "O, no, sir; she went to buy a box of matches." "Why, you said she had gone to heaven." "Yes, sir--but you said last Sunday that matches were made in heaven, and so I thought she went there."

N. B.--I don't believe a word of this; but if true, all I have to say is, that, like the princes in the tower, it is well that such children are not often allowed to grow up. "Whom the G.o.ds love die young," said the ancients; but I say, Whom the G.o.ds love die of old age--unless they have been snuffed out for their untimely brilliancy.

No. 35. "Father, I don't like the bishop." "Why, dear?" "Because he sprinkled water all over my new frock, and said '_f.a.n.n.y, I despise thee!_'"

No. 36. A little girl of seven years, who had been brought up to go to _meeting_, and knew nothing about a church, high or low, was taken by a friend to the Episcopal church on communion day. Returning home, she was asked by her father how she liked the service. "Well, papa," she answered, "I must say that I don't like to go to a place where the minister _has to change his s.h.i.+rt three times in meeting_." Ritualistic, High-Church ceremonies, the young lady was not quite prepared for.

No. 37. A certain little Sissy, being worried by a big brother till she was out of all patience, plumped down upon her knees, where she stood, and cried out, "O Lord! bless my brother Tom. He lies--he steals--he swears; all boys do--we girls don't. Amen!" Was the poor thing a little pharisee in her indignation, without knowing it? or was she only--like most of us who are loudest in our outcries for the salvation of others--a little overburdened with self-righteousness?

No. 38. _Small boy on tip-toe to his playfellows._--"Now you hush there, all of you."

"Why, what's the matter, Bobby?" "Well--we've got a new baby. It's very weak and tired, and walked all the way from heaven last night; and you mustn't be kicking up a row here now."

No. 39. _Little Tommy._--"I say, ma, is it true that we are made out of the dust?"

_Ma._--"Yes, Tommy; so we are told."

_Tommy._--"I'll be hanged if I can believe it; 'cause you see, if we was, when we sweat, wouldn't we be muddy?"

That boy was a Transcendentalist, and no mistake.

No. 40. _Natural affection betraying itself._--A man of influence and character was dying slowly of consumption. Being satisfied that his days were numbered--his very breathings counted--he used to call his little son to the bed-side, the pet of the household, and say to him, whenever he wanted any little thing done, that by and by, after he was dead and buried, the horse and carriage, and money-box, would all be little Sammy's. At last the father died, and the little fellow, then about five years of age,--with his grandfather and mother, were about leaving the graveyard,--s.n.a.t.c.hed the reins from his grandfather, and sung out, "_Get up, old hoss! You's mine now, carriage, money-box and all!_" Had he been a few years older, he would have kept the secret to himself, and peradventure looked sorrowful over the untimely inheritance.

No. 41. Little Frank had been told to believe that we are all made of dust. One day, as he stood watching at the window, while a strong wind was whirling the dust into eddies, and hurrying it away into holes and corners, and there piling it up with the dried leaves, his mother asked him what he was thinking of. "O," said he, with uncommon seriousness for so young a philosopher, "I thought the dust looked as though there was going to be another little boy."

No. 42. A very little chap, who would no more have thought of going to bed without saying his prayers, than of going to bed without his supper, while the goodies were in sight, had just bidden everybody good-night, with a warm, loving kiss. That very day his mother had been teaching him the lines, "You'd scarce expect one of my age," and so he began his little prayer in the following fas.h.i.+on: "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; if I should chance to fall below Demosthenes or Cicero, don't view me with a cricket's eye, but----"

"Hush, hus.h.!.+" said his mother; "O hush, my boy! that's no part of the prayer."

"Yes it is too, mamma--don't view me with a cricket's eye," etc., etc.

Didn't that mother laugh a little to herself, think you? I'll bet she did.

No. 43. A teacher in one of our Sabbath-schools, who had quite a reputation for accommodating his lesson to the understanding of children, said to a little bit of a thing, one day, with whom she had been laboring for a long while, "If a naughty girl should strike you, my dear, you would forgive her, wouldn't you?" "Yeth, marm--if I couldn't catch her," was the reply--only to be matched by the dying Highlander, who called out to a neighboring chief, whom he had just been reconciled to, "But mark ye, lairdee--mind now--if I get abroad agen, all this goes for naethin'."

No. 44. Another little chap, just verging upon three, but of a thoughtful, prying disposition far beyond his years, sat watching his mother while she was making biscuit for tea--though her husband was an Orthodox clergyman of Pittsfield, Ma.s.s.--and asked her if it was not wicked to work on Sunday. "Certainly," said she. "O my!" said he, clapping his little hands, "won't 'oo catch it, when 'oo gets to heaven!"

No. 45. And then, too, how knowing the little wretches are sometimes. A young gentleman of about five summers was travelling in a crowded stage-coach, and had been taken into the lap of a pa.s.senger. On the way, some stories were told about pickpockets and their adroitness, and the conversation at last became general. "Ah, my fine fellow," said the gentleman who had the little one upon his knee, "how easy I could pick _your_ pocket"--as it lay gaping near his hand. "No you couldn't, neither," said the boy, "'cause I've been looking out for you all the way."

No. 46. And how wise beyond their years, and how full of resource in danger, sometimes. As three children, Peter Mitch.e.l.l, Louis Leach, and Ann I. Lindsay, aged eight, five and four--I give their names, that they be remembered, and the facts verified--were playing about the premises of Mr. Horace Balcomb, in the town of Sudbury, Ma.s.s., Leach tumbled into a hogs-head of rain-water set in the earth, five feet deep. As soon as he fell in, the boy Mitch.e.l.l ran away to find his mother, who lived a long way off; but the little girl--only four, you will remember--managed to get hold of the drowning boy by the shoulders, and keep his head above the water, till the neighbors came to her help, and pulled him out in safety.

No. 47. In a Boston Sunday-school--where, of course, impertinent, puzzling questions are never allowed--the teacher asked, "Where was Jesus _taken_, when he was arrested in the garden?" A bright little thing answered immediately, "To the station-house." Whereupon the teacher observed that there were no station-houses at that time; and the poor child instantly corrected herself by saying, "I meant the State's Prison." Teachers, beware!

No. 48. A naughty little boy, being told by his mother that G.o.d would not forgive him, if he did something, answered, "Yes He would too--G.o.d likes to forgive little boys--that's what He's for." Of course that boy was a Universalist from the sh.e.l.l, and had about as clear a notion of what G.o.d was _for_, as many a profound theologian, or metaphysician.

No. 49. But we have Grace Darlings, Florence Nightingales, and many other self-denying, self-sacrificing heroines in miniature. We have only to look about us, and have our ears open, and see, and hear, and remember for ourselves, that female wonders are of all ages and every age, and that G.o.d never measures them by feet or inches, nor counts their years, nor weighs them in any other than the scales with which He weighed the earth itself, at the beginning.

A long train of cars, fourteen or fifteen at least, were hurrying through the Alleghanies. They were crowded with pa.s.sengers. As they went headlong down the inclined plane, they came to a short, narrow curve, hewed through the living rock, with a high, steep wall on each side.

Suddenly a steam-whistle was heard through the gorge, screaming, Put on the brakes! put on the brakes! Every window flew up, and scores of heads were thrust out, and all the pa.s.sengers sprang to their feet, while the cars went thundering on, with a continually increasing speed. As the engine approached the curve, the engineer had caught a glimpse of a little girl playing on the track with her baby-brother. One moment! and the cars would be tearing over them. The scream of the whistle startled the little girl, and her marvellous readiness and self-possession, like a flash. Seizing her baby-brother, she crowded him into a crevice made by blasting, and just about large enough to admit the little fellow; and the next moment, while the pa.s.sengers were holding their breath, and expecting to see the poor girl crushed against the steep wall, they heard a clear, sweet, childish voice, like one crying in the wilderness, "Cling close to the rock, Johnny! cling close to the rock!" and saw the baby cuddling up close to the rough wall, as to the bosom of its mother, while the ponderous cars whirled past him like a tornado. Careless for herself, or at the worst, not thinking at all of herself, the poor little barefooted sister stood for a moment like her brother's guardian-angel, between the living and the dead.

No. 50. But just read the following, which is undoubtedly true--true in every particular. Three children belonging to New Brunswick got lost in the woods. It was a dreary, wild region; a dark storm was brewing; it was near nightfall. The eldest, only six, having satisfied herself that there was no hope of their being found, nor of their finding their way out before the next day, put the little ones into a sheltered nook, stripped off most of her own clothes to wrap them in, and went away in search of dry sea-weed and brush, to cover them with. The next day the little ones were found all warm and breathing, with the sea-gra.s.s and brush heaped up about them, and the dear little six-year-old mother lying dead and stiff on the sh.o.r.e, alongside of the last pile of brush she had gathered, but wanted the strength to carry off.

No. 51. Three little girls were playing among the poppies and sage-brush of the back-yard. Two of them were making believe keep house, a little way apart, as near neighbors might. At last one of them was overheard saying to the youngest of the lot, "There now, Nellie, you go over to Sarah's house and stop there a little while, and talk as fast as ever you can, and then you come back and tell me what she says about me, and then I'll talk about her; and then you go and tell her all I say, and then we'll get mad as hornets, and won't speak when we meet, just as our mothers do, you know; and that'll be such fun--won't it?" Hadn't these little mischiefs lived to some purpose? and were they not close observers, and apt scholars, charmingly trained for the chief business of life in a small neighborhood?

No. 52. A young hopeful of our acquaintance, under five years of age, has been for a long time debating with himself whether he would be a circus-rider or a brigadier-general. After weighing all the _pros_ and _cons_, he has decided for the circus. What a pity some of our brigadiers had not gone through a similar process in the late war--and arrived at the same conclusion! We should have been spared many a blundering mishap.

No. 53. A three-year-old baby in Georgetown, D.C., having watched the operations of newsboys and letter-carriers while distributing circulars, newspapers, etc., took from his father's desk a large pile of business letters, and began the process of distribution with astonis.h.i.+ng success; but, after all, brought no blushes to anybody's cheek, so far as we have reason to believe, notwithstanding the example set him by the little boy with his sister's love-letters, already mentioned. See No.

20.

Well do I remember a little chubby fellow strutting through the country kitchen of his father, when I myself was but a broth of a boy, with a heap of folded papers sticking out of his trousers' pocket. "These be all writs, by George!" said he, slapping his thigh as he went along.

Upon further inquiry, we found that he was imitating a new deputy-sheriff, who used to come a-courting there Sabba'-days.

No. 54. A young gentleman of only six at the outside, was cruelly beset by a baby of eighteen months, with decided manifestations of fondness.

"Don't you see, Johnny, that the baby wants to kiss you?" said his mother. "Yes 'm--'at's 'cause he tates me for his papa," was the explanation of Lilliput. My own little fellow used to complain that the servant-girls were always under his feet, when he invaded the kitchen.

No. 55. While crossing a steam-ferry, a little three-year-old exclaimed, as he saw a sail-boat, "O, mamma! there's a boat with a bonnet on"--a poke-bonnet, of course.

No. 56. And sometimes the best of us get more than we have bargained for, while trying to enlighten these will-o'-the-wisps. A preacher, who was talking to the boys in a pleasant, familiar way at the New-Hamps.h.i.+re State Reform-School, about good people being respected while the naughty were despised and shunned, ventured on an ill.u.s.tration suited to their capacities. "Now, boys, when I walk through the streets, and I speak to some people, and not to others, what is the reason?" "'Cause some are rich and some are poor," yelped a little fellow in the corner; who, it may be, never heard of the Apostle James, nor of what he says in Chapter II. about the rich man coming into your a.s.sembly with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and also a poor man in vile raiment, and you say to the first, "Sit thou here in a good place; and to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit under my footstool;" yet was he learned in the Scripture nevertheless, and that without knowing it,--G.o.d Almighty being his teacher.

No. 57. Can this be true? If yea, that child must have died young. It is from the _Lawrence Eagle_. "In a gentleman's family in this city," says the editor, "there is a little boy somewhat remarkable for smartness, and for his understanding of 'pure English undefiled.' He is only four.

Not many days since, he was at the table 'cutting up' in the usual way, when his mother reproved him. Upon this he began b.u.t.tering a huge slice of bread at such a furious rate, that his mother found it necessary to interfere again: 'Why Johnny,' said she, 'how you do behave! You mustn't eat so much b.u.t.ter; it will be the death of you.' The little chap looked up with a roguish smile, and said, 'Well, mother, I mean to go well b.u.t.tered, you see, if I am not so well _bread_.'" This the editor was kind enough to explain, by enclosing "_bred_" in a parenthesis, after the style of newspaper purveyors, who seem to take it for granted that most of their capital jokes are unintelligible to the common reader.

No. 58. Little Daisy's mother was trying to make her understand the meaning of _smile_. "Oh yes, I know," said the little one, her face all lighting up as she spoke, "it is the whisper of a laugh." Quite equal to the "frozen music" of architecture, or the "poetry of motion." _Sed quaere_, as the lawyers say, Was such a thing ever said by a little child? I know not.

No. 59. But here is something we can believe. A buxom Ohio school-girl was going through her calisthenic performances for the amus.e.m.e.nt of her little brothers and sisters. A youthful visitor, full of compa.s.sion for the poor thing, asked her brother _if that gal had fits_? "No," replied the indignant brother, "them's gymnastics." "Oh, I see; how long has she had 'em?" which reminds me that I was once asked by a laborer, who saw half a hundred stout fellows exercising in the open air, bare-headed, with their jackets off, in Voelker's London Gymnasium at St. John's Wood, "How much we got a day?"

No. 60. But the inquisitiveness of these folks, who are to govern the world hereafter, is not confined to every-day investigations; and well for us that they are not: and well must it be for the nations--for what our children are now, that will our country be hereafter.

"Mamma, how does G.o.d born people black?" said a sprightly little whippersnapper, who had been listening to a talk about the freedmen.

"By His great power."

"Well, I guess He must have a great big pot of blackin', and then He smooches 'em all over, jess as soon as they are borned."

"No, no, my dear--that would soon rub off," said mamma.

After a while a very earnest, exulting little voice was heard from underneath the bedclothes, saying, "I know now, mamma! He mixes the blackin' with the dust."

Set down that child for a thorough-going investigator--never to be put off with anything short of demonstration--like Sir Humphrey Davy, or Faraday.

No. 61. And then, too, how jealous they are of their little prerogatives, and how they stand up for themselves, when hard pushed! A returned Californian found the baby he had left in her mother's lap, a smart little wayward minx of five summers. One day he happened to offend her ladys.h.i.+p, when she exclaimed, "There now! I do wish you'd never married into the family."

No. 62. Freddy, a sunny-haired little fellow, just beginning to say "I shall be five next year about this time," after sitting awhile as if lost in thought, broke out with, "Say, pa, can G.o.d do anything?" "Yes, dear." "Can He make a two-year old colt in two minutes?" "Why--He wouldn't want to do that, Freddy." "But I say pa, if He did want to, could He do it?" "Yes, certainly," answered the father, somewhat annoyed at the child's pertinacity. "What! in two minutes, pa?" "Yes, in two minutes." "Well, then, the colt wouldn't be two years old, would he?"

There's a logician for you--ay, and metaphysician too; but there! don't they swarm about our supper-tables and Sabbath-schools, just now, like the frogs in Egypt?