Part 6

No. 82. And here we have something out of the common way, well vouched for, and thoroughly safe to be repeated. A little boy of only eight years, a son of Mr. Elias Bates, drove to the Agricultural Fair in Medford, Mass., a pair of black calves, which were so perfectly trained as to draw a little blue wagon, which had been got up for the occasion. The little fellow--and this, probably, will be thought the best part of the story by most of our young readers,--was furnished with _scrip_ from the wallets of the bystanders to the amount of nobody knows how many dollars; enough, at any rate, to nearly fill his cap. Whereat, says the narrator, he was so entirely overcome with surprise and joy, that he cried, and laughed, tried to talk, and then fairly broke down, and took to his heels, and ran away, as if the dogs were after him.

No. 83. Lilly and Nina had prepared a doll's breakfast, and arrayed it on a side-board, while they went to take a romp in the garden. Master Bob, their little brother, clambered up the side-board and began gobbling the dainties, as boys will do, you know, whatever may be their age. "Why, Bobby!" said his mother, looking in at the open door, "what _are_ you doing there?" "Playin' pussy, mamma."

No. 84. At a country fair in New Jersey, not long ago, a little boy who was running about, like a distracted thing, and bawling as if he would split his throat, was asked what was the matter. "I want my mammy," said he, "that's what's the matter! Didn't I tell the darned thing she'd lose me?"

No. 85. A little four-year-old went to church in Bridgeport, Connecticut, last summer. On getting home, her mother asked her if she remembered the text. "O yes, mamma; it was this: 'The Ladies Sewing Circle will meet at Mrs. So-and-so's house, on Monday afternoon.'" A capital text, whatever may have been the sermon.

No. 86. A Boston boy, five years of age, and a type of many now flourishing there, if not a type of that class who are to be the gold-brokers of hereafter, at least a representative boy of the shrewd and calculating, now on their way up in the cashier-business, which so often ends of late in there being neither cash-_here_ nor cash-_there_ for stockholders, having stolen, or appropriated, a can of milk, was taken solemnly to task for the misdemeanor by his loving mother. "What on earth were you going to do with the milk?" said she. "O, I was going to steal a little puppy to drink it," was the reply. Perfectly satisfactory, no doubt, like certifying checks by the handful, and appropriating, or _conveying_, the gold of widows and orphans by the wheelbarrow-load into a friend's pocket, or in speculating where what you gain is yours, and what you lose, another's.

No. 87. A clergyman asked some children why we say Our Father _who art in Heaven_, since God is everywhere? A little drummer-boy, who stood afar off, looked as if he understood the question. "Well, my little soldier, what have you to say?" "Because it's head-quarters," he replied.

No. 88. "A little nephew of ours," says a contributor, "went with his sister to school not long ago, for the first time. They kept him there five mortal hours, with a short recess, which he did not know how to take advantage of. On being asked how he enjoyed the school, he answered, 'Petty well, I tank you, but I dut awfully _rested_.'"

No. 89. _A Specimen of Childish Faith, which, if not dwarfed nor blighted, would be enough--almost--to move Mountains, after getting its growth._--Two little girls, one nine and the other eleven, on getting up one morning, had a trial to see which would get dressed first. Little Sue was the winner; and turning to her sister, with the triumphant air of a victor at the Olympian games, she said, "I knew I should beat you, Sissy; for I asked God to help me, _and I knew He would_."

No. 90. A fine-looking, saucy, high-spirited girl of ten, bought of a fashionable shoe-maker a pair of warranted boots. They broke out with one day's wear. She carried them back to him. After turning them over, inside and out, awhile, he said, "They were not taken in quite enough, I see." "No," she replied, "but I was."

No. 91. A promising little chap having heard it stated confidentially that a neighbor was married, and that she had a little boy and girl, stowed the fact away for future use; and not long after reproduced it in a large company of ladies and gentlemen, after this fashion: "Miss M----, I tink our tortus-shell tat's ben dittin married--she's dut tittens." But tortoise-shell cats don't have kittens--at least, not of themselves, if by proxy; but _qui facit per alium facit per se_, as the lawyers say; and the little boy may have misunderstood the symptoms.

No. 92. Charley, the other day, on seeing three or four funerals in swift succession, expressed a wish that he might die "before Heaven was too full."

No. 93. A mother, out a-shopping with her little girl and boy, bought him a rubber balloon, which escaped while he was playing with it, and went off up into the sky. Sissy, on seeing the tears in his eyes, and his quivering chin, said, "Never mind, Neddy--when you dies and dose to Heaben, you'll dit it."

No. 94. A Bible-class had been called upon for the names of the precious stones mentioned in the Scriptures. After the question had gone through the class, one little fellow held up his hand. "Well, Tommy," said the teacher, "what precious stone have you found?" "Brimthtone, thir!"

No. 95. This beautiful anecdote must be given in the very words of the narrator: "A lady visiting New York, found a ragged, cold, and hungry child gazing wistfully at some cakes in a shop window. She took the little forlorn thing by the hand, led her into the shop, bought her a cake, and then led her away, and supplied her other wants. The grateful little creature looked her full in the face, and whispered, '_Are you God's wife?_'"

No. 96. A fashionable woman called upon a dentist to have some teeth filled, taking with her a little niece. Among these were two front incisors, which were filled on the lower edge. In a pleasant mood, when everything went well with Aunty, glimpses of the gold were occasionally seen. "O Aunt Mary," said the child, "how I should like to have copper-toed teeth, like yours!"

And this reminds me of a little boy, whose father was bald-headed. One day he was sent to have his hair cut. "How would you like to have it cut, my little man?" said the artist. "Like papa's, with a hole in the top," said he,--perhaps to see through.

No. 97. Master Jimmy was standing on his father's steps, in broad daylight, smoking a cigar. "Why, Jim," said a neighbor, who was hurrying by, "when did you learn to smoke?" "O," says the boy--"when I was a little fellow!"

No. 98. "Papa," said a small urchin with a mischievous eye--"I say, papa, ought the master to flog a fellar for what he didn't do?" "Certainly not, my boy." "Well, then, he flogged me to-day when I didn't do my sum." And there he had him!

No. 99. And this, too, is vouched for--though not by me: A little girl, about five years old, heard a preacher vociferating in prayer till the roof rang again. "Mother," said the little one, "don't you think, if he lived nearer to God, he wouldn't have to pray so loud?" Maybe she had been told about the priests of Baal, and their shouting before the Hebrew prophet, who mocked them.

No. 100. Bishop Simpson, they say, in a lecture delivered at Boston, had the courage to say, that in two or three years, at furthest, Chinese servants would be common there. Next morning the father happened to mention it. "O, pa," whispered Minnie, "won't it be nice! we shall have a Chinese servant, and she will eat all the rats, and so we sha'n't have to keep a cat!"

No. 101. A youngster, who had been playing in a mud-puddle till his rubber boots were full of the dirty water, came home at last to report progress, and ask leave to sit again. But his mother, with an eye to doctor's bills, and a whooping-cough, or scarlet fever, said No; and the child was kept in the house all day, till he could bear it no longer. "O mamma!" said he, at last, "please whip me, and let me go out again--_do_." It seems that he had outwaded all the rest of the boys, without going much beyond his depth.

No. 102. Children are wonders. No matter how well acquainted with them we may be, they are always taking us off our feet. A pious woman heard a child, as she thought, say--and the child, too, of godly parents--"Dam it to hell--who buys?"--having a basket on his arm, containing she knew not what, so shocked was she. On reporting the case at head-quarters, the affair was investigated, and it turned out that the poor little fellow had a bushel of damsons, which he made believe hawk round, after the fashion of small dealers who cry their wares in the street. What he tried to say was, "Damsons to sell--who buys?"

No. 103. "How many sisters did you say, my dear?" "Only one beside myself." "And how many brothers?" "None at all." "What! no brother!" "No sir; mamma don't _approve_ of boys." That's a fact.

No. 104. A little nigger-boy at the South had just been equipped with a new suit of clothes, the first he ever had in his life, you may be sure. Next morning he appeared with one leg of the trousers ripped up from shoe to waistband. On being asked how it happened, he answered, "Please ma'am, I wanted to hear it _flop_!"

No. 105. Another little boy, while playing by himself on the carpet, burst out with a ringing laugh. On being questioned, it turned out that he had taken off the tail of a little toy pony, and stuck it into the pony's mouth. "Papa," said he, "do Dod see everything?" "Yes, my boy." "Well, then, I dess Dod will laugh, when He sees my pony."

No. 106. "I have somewhere met with a story," says a pleasant, gossiping observer, "about a man who went, one dark night, to steal corn from his neighbor's patch. He had taken his little boy with him to keep watch. The man jumped over the fence with a large bag on his arm; but before he began to fill it, he stopped and looked about on all sides, and, not seeing anybody, was just going to work, when his little boy cried out, 'Oh, father, father! there is one way you haven't looked yet!'

"The old man was rather startled, and asked what he meant.

"'Why,' said the little one, 'you forgot _to look up_.'

"The father was silent--thunder-struck--as if he had been admonished by a little guardian angel: he went back to the fence, took his little boy by the hand, and hurried away without the corn."

No. 107. A mother was reading to her child, a boy of seven, about another little boy whose father had lately died, leaving the family destitute, whereupon the boy went to work for himself, and managed to support them all.

"Now, my little man," said mother, after she had finished the story, "if papa should be taken away, wouldn't you like to help your poor mother and your little sisters?"

"Why, ma--what for? Ain't we got a good house to live in?"

"O yes, my child; but we couldn't eat the house, you know."

"Well--ain't we got flour and sugar, and other things in the store-room?"

"Certainly, my dear; but they wouldn't last long--and what then?"

"Well--ain't there enough to last, till you could get another husband?"

Mamma _dried up_--just as the boy had _slopped over_.

No. 108. A mother had been telling her little girl about the blessings above. "But will mamma be there too?" asked the child.

"Yes; you and I, and little brother, and papa." "O no, mamma," said she--"papa can't go; papa can't leave the store."

No. 109. A little four-year-old, living just out of New York, was saying the Lord's Prayer at his mother's knee. After he had finished, she said to him--

"Now, Sandy, ask God to make you a good boy."

The child hesitated, grew thoughtful, and, after a few minutes, looked up and whispered--

"It's no use, mamma--He won't do it, I tell you; I've asked Him ever so many times."

No. 110. A little girl, the daughter of a Brooklyn wife, had been listening to an argument about the occupations above, and the great Hereafter. Turning suddenly to her aunt, she asked what people found to do after they went to Heaven. Her aunt, being taken by surprise, answered, "O, they play on golden harps." "What--all the time!" "Yes--all the time, dear." "Then," said the child, "I don't want to go there--I should be _so_ tired; and, what is more, I don't like the music."

No. 111. "Is it still raining, my dear?" said a mother to her child of only three, at Jamaica, L. I. The child, after looking out of the window, turned to her mother and said, "No, mamma, it ain't a-rainin' now, but the trees is leakin'." The same child, having a habit of putting pins in her mouth, was anxiously watched. Whenever she was very still, they knew she was in some mischief. The other day, on seeing her stand at the bureau in perfect silence, her mother began to have her suspicions. "Mary," said she, "you are playing with pins, I'm afraid; I hope you haven't got any in your mouth." "I ain't dut any in my mouth now," she said; "but I bin playin' pins is meat."

No. 112. One round more, and I throw up the sponge. The same little wee thing--a granddaughter of my own, by the way, and the first of the series--mentioned in No. 10, who spelled _pigeon_ with _Q. U. A. I. L._, and pronounced it _fidget_, was looking at a hive, in a book for babies. "O," she shouted--"O, grandpa, I know what them is! They's the honeys, and when they go away, I mean to steal their _porridge_." N. B.--She had always called honey porridge.

No. 113. Once--and I give this for a fine illustration of the total depravity we hear so much of--I had a pleasant specimen of the inward working of that self-reproach we are all tried with sometimes, in this way: Miss Nellie seemed shy of me one morning, when she came into the breakfast room. Instead of running up to grandpa with a kiss upon her little red lips, she kept aloof, and went wandering about beyond my reach, with her eyes fastened on me all the time. At last, unable to bear it longer, she whimpered, "Oo needn't look at me so, grandpa; I ony toot one tawbelly."

No. 114. "High, there, high!" said Grandfather Hall to my little boy--the first we had. "You don't know where you are." "Yes I do, grandpa." "Well, where are you?" "I'm here," was the reply.

No. 115. _Analogy._--"What the plague is that?" said a father to his little boy, as a dog ran past them with a muzzle over his head. "Well, I guess it's a little _hoop-skirt_," said the boy.

No. 116. _Prepare to Pucker!_--A little four-year-old chap had been trying a long while to pucker his mouth into shape, for whistling a national tune, which he had just heard upon the street. At last he gave it up, and went to his mother with tears in his eyes, exclaiming, "Ma, I's so little I tan't make a hole big enough for Yankee Doolum to dit out."

No. 117. _Disinterested Advice._--"Mammy" said another little fellow, just big enough to gobble dough-nuts, and relish mud-pies and lollipop, who had been set to rocking the cradle of his baby brother, of whom he professed to be very fond--_very_--"Mammy! if the Lord's got any more babies to give away, don't you take 'em."

No. 118. _Rather a Paradox._--"What is conscience?" asked a sabbath-school teacher. "An inward monitor," was the reply of a smart little fellow, not large enough to spell ratiocination with safety. "And what is a monitor?" "One of the iron-clads." Ergo.

No. 119. _The Reason why._--A boy of nine, having a motherly hen with a large brood of chickens to watch, undertook to satisfy his mother that he would rather be a chicken than a boy--chickens were so much happier. The mother was obstinate, and so was the boy; but the next day he happened to come across a copy of "Don Quixote," with which he was so carried away, that he ran off to his mother to tell her that, on the whole, "he guessed he'd rather be a boy than a chicken;" for, "if I was a chicken," said he, "I couldn't read 'Don Quixote.'"

No. 120. _Retribution._--A little four-year-old shaver, living on Munjoy, had picked up some naughty words--nobody knew where. But his mother, to cure him, was in the habit of touching the tip of his tongue with a little black pepper, until he seemed to have abandoned the practice. Only last week, however, the Old Adam broke out afresh, and he ran off to his mother, saying, "Dod dam it! Dod dam it! Now dit your pepper-bots!" and then rushed to the table and grabbed the box, and turned it up for the prescribed allowance; but the cover came off--as might have been expected--filling his mouth, so that he could neither speak nor breathe for awhile, and looked upon it as a judgment, and has now left off swearing--for the present.

No. 121. _Influence of Example._--"I've done it, mamma! I've done it!" screamed a little three-year-old tantrybogus, from the top of the cellar stairs, to his mother, who had just left the kitchen for a few minutes. "Tum and tee, mamma!" And sure enough, he had _done it_! having upset a basket of eggs, and smashed them all, one after another, in a sort of ecstacy. His mother had been preparing for a batch of cake, and he had been delighted with her treatment of the eggs.

No. 122. _Appropriate Language._--"Auntie," said another little three-year-old, one day--"Auntie, I don't lite mine apons tarched so drefful. So much tarchess makes the tiffness tratch my--bareness."

No. 123. _After-thoughts._--Master Frank was in the habit of tumbling out of bed o' nights, and his father would call him to account for it next morning. One day he said, "Well, Frank, and so you tumbled out of bed again?" "No I didn't, papa--it was the pillow; for I went up to see, and the pillow was on the floor, by the bed-side." "What made you cry, then, my boy?" "Well, you see, it was so dark, papa, I couldn't tell at first whether 'twas me or the pillow."

No. 124. _Baby Theologians._--A child in the sabbath-school, on being asked if he could mention a place where God was not, answered, "He is not in the thoughts of the wicked."

Another, when told that God was everywhere, asked, "In this room?" "Yes." "In the closet?" "Yes." "In the drawers of my desk?" "Yes--everywhere--He's in your pocket now." "No He ain't, though." "And why not?" "Tauth, I ain't dut no pottet."

No. 125. _A great Mystery._--"There is a little girl in Kentucky," says a respectable paper, judging by appearances, "who has never spoken to her father. She talks freely with anybody else, but when her father speaks to her, she is speechless. They have whipped her, again and again, but to no purpose; for she declares, with trembling lips, and with tears in her eyes, that she has often tried to speak to him, but could not."

No. 126. _Childish Metaphysics._--A grandson of the governor of Virginia, a child of only four or five summers, was on a visit, not long ago, to his maternal grandfather, a large landholder in Ohio. One day, after a first visit to the sabbath-school, he led his grandfather down to a magnificent tree, heavily laden with walnuts.

"Grandpa," said he, "whom do all these woods and fields belong to?"--of course the child said _who_, instead of _whom_; but that is neither here nor there.

"They belong to me, Charley."

"No, sir--_no!_--they belong to God."

The grandfather said nothing, till they reached the tree.

"Well, my boy, whom does this tree belong to?" he asked, as they stopped underneath its wide, heavy branches.

For a moment, Charley hesitated; and then, looking up into the tree, he said, while his mouth watered visibly, "Well, gran'father, the tree belongs to God, but the walnuts are _ours_."

No. 127. "_A touch of Nature makes the whole world kin._"--A little boy, who had been tormented by clouds of mosquitoes till he could bear it no longer, exclaimed, "O dear me! O dear me! I do wish God would kill the mosquitoes! I don't know what I would give Him, if He only would."

No. 128. _An Etymologist._--A Connecticut boy insisted on knowing what was meant by the slang phrase, "a gone sucker"; and was overheard praying soon after, on being sent off to bed--"God bless papa and mamma, and baby; but I'se been such a bad boy, I rather guess I'm _a gone sucker_."

No. 129. "How old are you, my dear?" said a railroad conductor to a little gentlewoman, whose mother was trying to pass with a half ticket. "I'm nine at home," was the reply, "but in the cars I'm only half-past six."

No. 130. _A fair Inference._--Dear little Mamie H., who had just got over her sixth birthday, was studying her sabbath-school lesson, when her mother told her, in reply to some question she had urged with a deal of earnestness, that the naughty devil was black. "Well, then, mamma," said the child, "if he was a good devil, I s'pose he'd be white."

No. 131. _Grandchildren on their Good Behavior._--Bishop, to Nellie peeping through the side-lights, with a big tom-cat in her arms. "Come and see me, Nellie."

"No--I tan't."

_Bishop._--"Come come, and bring the cat with you; I want to see her."

"No, no! Tommy don't like Bishops."

No. 132. _A Baby Spendthrift._--"I say, Bobby," said one little youngster to another, "lend me two cents, will yer? I got up so early, that I spent all my money 'fore breakfast."

"More fool you."

"Wal!--how should I know the day was goin' to be so long?"

No. 133. _A Maxim well applied._--"Never put off till to-morrow, my dear boy, what you can do to-day," said a watchful mother to her inquiring son. "Yes, mamma, and so we'll have the raspberry-pie now, that's put away for to-morrow--shan't we, mamma?"

No. 134. _A fair Inference._--At a sabbath-school concert in a crowded and popular church, the pastor, who prided himself on the quickness and cleverness of his little ones, said, "Boys, when I heard your beautiful songs to-night, I had to work hard to keep my feet still; now what do you think was the trouble with them?" "_Chilblainth!_" shouted a little chap of six, or thereabouts.

No. 135. _A timely Rebuke._--A bright-eyed little fellow, in one of the Brooklyn private-schools, having spelt a word, was asked by his teacher, "Are you willing to bet you're right, Bennie?" The boy looked up with an air of astonishment, and replied, "I _know_ I'm right, Miss V----, but I never bet."

No. 136. _A dangerous Query._--A pupil was asked what S double E spelt. Being rather slow with his answer, the teacher grew impatient, and exclaimed, "You dunce! What is it I do with my eyes?" "O', I know the word now, ma'am--S double E, _squint_."

No. 137. _Constructiveness._--The Springfield Republican tells of a young gentleman who doesn't want to be the last angel God makes, because "he wants to see how He makes 'em."

No. 138. _Imitation._--A little girl at Keokuk, Iowa, was lately found in a barn giving trapeze performances to quite a gathering of wee folks. They had fitted up a trapeze, with an old clothes-line and a broomstick, at an elevation of twenty feet. "The party was broken up," says a spectator, "before anything else was broken."

No. 139. _The Tables turned._--"Are you talking to me, sir?" said a respectable man to a little scapegrace, who had been holding what he called an argument with his papa; "I'm your father, sir. Remember that, sir!"

"Well, who's to blame for that, I should like to know--'taint me," said the boy.

No. 140. _Language._--A bright, clear-eyed little thing of three summers, after listening demurely to a chapter of the Old Testament, which her father read to the family aloud one pleasant Sabbath, looked up with the air of one who felt called upon to say something, in the dead silence that followed, and whispered, "Papa, ain't God a funny fellow?" What knew that child of irreverence? What she meant to say was that she had been delighted.