And pulling back the curtain she displayed six cradles occupied by six large baby dolls!
And that again recalls another, quite in the same line. One day a gentleman walking down a street observed a little boy seated on a doorstep. Going up to him, he said, "Well, my little chap, how is it you are sitting outside on the doorstep, when I see through the window all the other young folks inside playing games and having a good time? Why aren't you inside joining in the fun?" "I guess, stranger, that I'm in this game." replied the boy. "But how can you be, when you are out on the doorstep, and the others are all inside?" "Oh, I'm in the show right enough. You see, we're playing at being married. I'm the baby, and I'm not born yet!"
The late Dr. Norman M'cLeod—the great Norman—rejoiced in telling a story about two ragged children whom he found busy on the side of a country road one day, working with some stiffened mud, which they had carefully scraped together. "What's this you are making?" he asked. One of the children replied that it was a kirk. "A kirk! Ay, and where's the door?" "There it's." "And the pulpit?" "That's it." "And the minister?" The little one hesitated, then replied, very innocently—"We hadna dirt enough left to mak' a minister."
The minister, of course—and the weaker his character he should be the more careful—must always approach children with caution if he hopes to come out of the interview with his reputation unscathed. I have heard or read of a member of the cloth—a supreme egoist—who was visiting at a house when but the mother and her little girl—a mere child—were at home. As the self-esteemed great man was holding the mother in conversation, he noticed with pride that the child, who reposed on the hearthrug with a school-slate tilted on her knee, was making furtive glances up at his face, and returning her attention regularly to the slate, on which she kept scrawling with a pencil. When at length she stopped and looked serious, "Well, my dear," he exclaimed, "have you been trying to draw my portrait?" She did not reply, "Come," he continued, coaxingly, "you must let me see it." "Oh," interposed the proud mother, "she's awfu' clever at the drawin'." This made the minister still more eager to see the work, and he repeated his request for an exposure; but the child clutched the slate only more tightly to her breast and did not look up. "She's aye sae shy, ye ken," interceded the mother, as she reached her hand to procure the work of art by main force. It was then the little one found her tongue, and she exclaimed—"Oh, it wasna very like him, and I just put a tail till't, and ca'd it a doggie." The denouement leaves nothing to be desired.
Dean Ramsay, to whom his country owes so much for the elucidation of its characteristics, tells humorously of the elder of a kirk having found a little boy and his sister playing marbles on Sunday, and put his reproof not at all in judicious form by exclaiming—"Boy, do you know where children go who play marbles on the Sabbath-day?" Not in judicious form, truly, for the boy replied, "Ay, they gang doun to the field by the water below the brig." "No," roared out the elder, "they go to hell, and are burned." Worse than ever—for the elder—for the little fellow, really shocked, now called to his sister, "Come awa', Jeanie, here's a man swearin' awfu'."
"Among the lower orders in Scotland humour is found, occasionally, very rich in mere children," observes the Dean, "and I recollect a remarkable illustration of this early native humour occurring in a family in Forfarshire, where I used in former days to be very intimate. A wretched woman, who used to traverse the country as a beggar or tramp, left a poor half-starved little girl by the road-side near the house of my friends. Always ready to assist the unfortunate, they took charge of the child, and as she grew a little older they began to give her some education, and taught her to read. She soon made some progress in reading the Bible, and the native odd humour of which we speak began soon to show itself. On reading the passage which began 'Then David rose,' etc., the child stopped and looked up knowingly to say, 'I ken wha that was,' and being asked what she could mean, she confidently said, 'That's David Rowse the pleuchman.' And again, reading the passage where the words occur, 'He took Paul's girdle,' the child said, with much confidence, 'I ken what he took that for;' and on being asked to explain, replied at once, 'To bake his bannocks on.'"
Among less than a dozen examples in all of child humour, the good Dean has yet another worth telling, which he says, used to be narrated by an old Mr. Campbell of Jura, who told the story of his own son. The boy, it seems, was much spoilt by indulgence. In fact, the parents were scarce able to refuse him anything he demanded. He was in the drawing-room on one occasion when dinner was announced, and on being ordered up to the nursery he insisted on going down to dinner with the company. His mother was for refusal, but the child persevered and kept saying, "If I dinna gang, I'll tell yon." His father then, for peace sake, let him go. So he went, and sat at the table by his mother. When he found every one getting soup and himself omitted, he demanded soup, and repeated, "If I dinna get it, I'll tell yon." Well, soup was given, and various other things yielded to his importunities, to which he always added the usual threat of "telling yon." At last, when it came to wine, his mother stood firm, and positively refused, as "a bad thing for little boys," and so on. He then became more vociferous than ever about "telling yon;" and, as still he was refused, he declared, "Now I'll tell yon," and at last roared out—"My new breeks are made oot o' the auld curtains!"
That, however, is not the most delectable of child stories. We prefer the ideas of the little folks within the region of philosophy. When, for example, they want to know "Whaur div' a' the figures gang when they're rubbit oot?" and ask such questions as "Where does the dark go when the light comes?" "Was it not very wrong of God not to make Cain good as well as Abel?" or, "If it be true that some of the stars are bigger than this earth, how do they not keep the rain off?"
"I say, father," asked a little fellow as he raised his eyes off his home lesson, "Who invented the multiplication table?" "Oh, I don't know," he was answered; "it was invented long ago; why?"
"Well, I was thinking if the gentleman that invented it didn't know it already, he must have had a tough job; and if he did know it, what was the good of him inventing it at all?"