"'Cause, mamma, I don't want to lose all my pretty close, an' wear fedders, like a hen!"
There's truthfulness for you—worth its weight in gold—a string of "Orient pearls at random strung."
No. 19. Another little fairy, having been carefully trained to a proper estimate of the becoming in attire, was taken into a room to see her dead grandmother in her coffin. She looked very grave at first, and then sorrowful, and after a minute or two said, in a low, sweet, trembling voice, with her little hand stealing slowly into her mother's hand, "Has grandmamma gone to heaven in that ugly cap, mamma?"
No. 20. Little mischiefs, at the best, I have said—are they not? Just read the following, and say no, if you dare! A youngster in Peoria, Illinois, while ransacking his sister's portfolio, came across a package of love-letters carefully tied up with a blue ribbon, and stowed snugly away; being her correspondence with a charming fellow, not, perhaps, to the liking of papa and mamma. These he took to the corner of a crowded thoroughfare, and, as he had seen the postman do, distributed them to the passers-by. His poor sister heard of the achievement after they were in general circulation; and then!—ask our friend Carlyle, after shooting Niagara; or Wendell Phillips—after Grant. See No. 53.
No. 21. I have just met with this: "A little lady of thirty months only, insists on calling a cane with a crooked handle, 'An umbrella without any clothes on.'" There's a philologist for you! And one, too, capable of giving a reason for what she says.
No. 22. A little boy in Scotland was asked by his Sabbath-school teacher what was meant by regeneration. "Being born again," he replied. "And would you not like to be born again, my little man?" said the teacher. "No!" answered the boy, with decided emphasis, greatly to the surprise of the good dominie. "And why not?" continued the latter. "For fear I might be born a lassie," said the boy. Was there ever a better reason, with the poor boy's understanding of the great mystery? So much for dabbling with metaphysics before the unprepared.
No. 23. And sometimes they have to do with politics and other worldly matters,—the social evil, perhaps, or woman's-rights, or universal suffrage. And why not? being what they are, miniature men and women, with the rights of both.
"Be you a Democrat or a Republican?" said one of these President-makers in embryo, to another little fellow in a frilled apron. "No, I'm not either," was the indignant reply; "I belong to the Congregational Church." Of course he did; having been baptized into that denomination, when just old enough to be deeply impressed with the ceremony.
No. 24. A little girl of six years at the most, after her nurse had enlarged upon the character and attributes of the Old Evil One, till her blood ran cold, broke out with, "Auntie, if the devil is so wicked, why don't God kill him?" A question, by the way, which has "puzzled philosophers of all sects and ages," like the "cosmogony of the world," according to Oliver Goldsmith, and his delightful friend, Ephraim Jenkinson.
No. 25. Little Maud, five years old, was sitting on the floor, and trying to stitch like her mother. Suddenly looking up, after a long silence, she said, like one familiar with the gossip of the tea-table and the quilting-frame, "Mamma, I was thinking God must be getting quite along in years!" Of course, the poor little thing had never been so far indoctrinated, as to understand that, with God, a thousand years are as one day, or a watch in the night, and one day as a thousand years, with no past, and no future, but one everlasting present.