There is no accounting for the actions of children. Several youngsters, for instance, have been observed slyly pinching the figures to see if any were alive.
The story is also told of a small girl who, when asked what she had done with her sweets, replied that she had given them to the baby in the cradle—Prince Edward of Wales.
A child was lost, and found concealed behind the figure of the Sleeping Beauty, trying to discover the mechanism that makes Madame St. Amaranthe’s bosom rise and fall.
Of children’s stories there is no end at Madame Tussaud’s.
Sir Ernest Shackleton once told some amusing stories at a dinner of the Alpine Ski Club.
He said his own small boy was terribly bored with expedition talk. He told his mother that he wanted to hear of something really exciting. “I don’t want to know anything more about papa,” he declared; “tell me about the baby who was drowned in his bath.” Was the boy thinking of Marat, the evil genius of the French Revolution, whom Charlotte Corday stabbed at his ablutions?
Sir Ernest said that his wife and son had recently been to see his model at Madame Tussaud’s, but the child took more interest in General Tom Thumb sitting on the palm of the Russian giant’s hand than he did in the portrait of his father.
“Two ladies,” the explorer said, “were standing by my figure, and the younger one observed, ‘That’s Latham, the airman.’
“‘No,’ replied the other, ‘that is not Latham; it is the man, you know, who went to the North Pole.’