And a fatal boy replied, “The House of God.”
Never before or since have I seen a good man so utterly prostrated as was that Vicar.
If I were bound by chronology, I should keep to the end a comment on my own personal appearance made by a Manchester infant. I was coming out of school at dinner-time, and far below me, as I stood on the outer doorstep, I heard a shrill cry of “Hey!” There was an exceedingly small boy, aged four or five, gazing up into my sexagenarian face and grey beard.
“Hullo, Tommy! what’s the matter with you?” I replied.
The imp pointed over his shoulder at another infant, smaller and a shade dirtier:
“’Ee says you’re old Father Christmas.”
It was well for Tommy that he did not live in the days of Elisha: well for Tommy that the she-bears were shut up in the Belle Vue Gardens.
Not even the Diocesan Inspectors in Religious Knowledge are safe. One writes to me: “The children have a holiday after the diocesan inspection. Alluding to this yesterday in —— school I said, ‘What is the pleasantest part of my visit to you?’
A. ‘That you don’t come often.’”
The unexpected remarks were not always humorous: nay, at times they were intensely pathetic. I once picked up a beautifully clean baby from the front desk, and planted her on my knee, while the usual lesson on the cow, or the camel was droning on. She sat there in perfect content, apparently absorbed in contemplation of her best shoes, worn in honour of the inspection. Suddenly she turned to me, and murmured, “My daddy’s been thoompin’ our baby like anythink this mornin’.”