1. Tell in your own words the meaning of the rhyme of “Little Jack Horner.”
2. Do you know any other Mother Goose rhyme that has a hidden meaning?
DOUBLE DINKS.
BY ELIZABETH STODDARD.
WIDE AWAKES, you have not heard of the boy Lolly Dinks that was, and is—a boy mitey in body and mighty in mind. He knows himself as the son and ruler of Mr. Dinks, a mild, pleasant man, who tears his shirt collar in two of mornings when his slippers are in the very place he put them, and he can’t find them, and who sits up of nights making books out of other people’s thoughts, and calls it a Literary Avocation! I call it st—al—ng. What I write comes from my own mind and Lolly’s.
Now, as always, the business of my life is to amuse Lolly. Lots of oat-meal, beef-tea, little pills, have I taken to keep me up so that I might make a successful business. For a time I supposed that I was teaching him; but I wasn’t, he was teaching me, and from that he went on till I found he governed me. Did you ever hear anything like this—me, Mrs. Dinks, his mother, minding Lolly Dinks? Somebody has to mind me, and as Mr. Dinks will not read this, I confess I make him mind.
And I thought myself so clever,—that I was packing, cramming the cells of Lolly’s brain with useful in-for-ma-tion, as full as the cells of a bee-hive with honey. I did it at all hours, and made a nuisance of myself under all circumstances. I’d go on this way: Suppose it a winter morning, and breakfast-time. Lolly and I are waiting for the bell to ring.