Great Mysteries And Little Plagues Part 8

No. 104. A little n.i.g.g.e.r-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 dest.i.tute, 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 G.o.d 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 ill.u.s.tration 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. _a.n.a.logy._--"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--n.o.body 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 G.o.d was not, answered, "He is not in the thoughts of the wicked."

Another, when told that G.o.d 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 G.o.d."

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 G.o.d, but the walnuts are _ours_."