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."