No. 281. More Logic.—In our Putnam for October, there are two charming little manifestations of boyish character and boyish reasoning. A chap of only five, soon after the fire at Barnum's Museum, which he had investigated, was very anxious to know if there really were any such creatures as devils, "with horns, hoofs, bats'-wings and eagles' claws"—he had just been looking at an illustrated Pilgrim's Progress. Mamma tried to put him off, but in vain. At last, he broke out with, "Well—I don't believe there is any, for Barnum would be sure to have one." And then, after another glance at the illustration, he added, "How funny he would look in a cage, with his horns and tail!"
The same little fellow hid his face in his mother's lap one day, while it thundered. To soothe him, his mother explained the phenomena of thunder and lightning. A lull followed, and he ran off to play in a distant corner of the room. Then followed another burst, louder than usual. Back he ran to his mother, exclaiming, "I don't see what fun 'tis for God to go thunderin' round so!" Of course not.
No. 282. Natural History.—According to Peter Pindar, Sir Joseph Banks' fleas were lobsters till he boiled them, when "d—d a one turned red;" whereat he exclaimed, according to the same authority, who, in his own mortal extremity, if Byron may be credited,—
——"Supprest
With a death-bed sensation a blasphemous jest,"
"Fleas are not lobsters—d—n their souls!"
But another question has lately come up. A little girl, of the Buffalo tribe, wants to know if fleas are white; "cauth untle teld her that Mary had a little lamb with fleas as white as snow."
Another.—A charity scholar—perhaps one of the Ragged School—on being asked, after an examination in the Psalms, "What was the Pestilence that walketh in darkness?" answered,—"Bed bugth, thir!"—Not so much out of the way, after all; since fleas only hop in darkness.
No. 283. Cross-examination.—Says a neighbor, "Wife was undressing a little four-year-old—Charley—the other evening. After he was set free, he began to feel of his fat, chubby arms, with manifest self-complacency; and looking up into his mother's face, he said, 'Mamma, who made me?'"
"'The Good Man away up in the sky,'" said mamma.
"Whereupon Charley grew thoughtful, and after looking up through the tree-tops into the clear blue starlit sky for a few minutes, added, 'But, mamma, who took me down?'"