London having yielded its quota, the "Second City" may be again drawn upon.
A little boy of tender years was sitting on the doorstep of a house in Bridgeton, there, the other morning, crying bitterly, when a girl of about the same age accosted him, and the following conversation was overheard:—"What are ye greetin' for, laddie?" she inquired, in sympathetic tones. "Did onybody hit ye?" "N-n-na," sobbed the boy. "Then, what is't ye're greetin' for?" the little damsel went on. "'Cause my wee brither's gane to heaven," exclaimed the little fellow, bitterly, between his sobs. "Oh!" ejaculated the girl; and then, after a pause, "but ye shouldna greet like that—maybe he hasna."
Another. Recently a little fellow came home from school crying bitterly, and altogether manifesting great sorrow. "What's the matter, Geordie," sympathetically inquired his mother, "has onybody been hittin' ye?" "N-n-n-o," answered the boy between his sobs. "Then, what are you crying about?" she went on. "Boo! hoo! wee Sammy Sloan's faither an' mither hae flitted to Coatbrig!" "Tuts, laddie, dinna greet about that," she exclaimed, re-assuringly, "there's plenty mair laddies bidin' in the street besides Sammy Sloan that ye can play wi'." "I ken that," said Geordie, with another sob, "but he was the only yin I could lick."
Children, really, as we have been revealing so frequently here, have the fresh and original notions of things, and are always frank enough to give them voice.
A little boy was reading the story of a missionary having been eaten by cannibals. "Papa," he asked, "will the missionary go to heaven?" "Yes, my son," replied the father. "And will the cannibals go there, too?" queried the youthful student. "No," was the reply. After thinking the matter over for some time, the little fellow exclaimed—"Well, I don't see how the missionary can go to heaven if the cannibals don't, when he's inside the cannibals."
One Sunday evening, while sitting on his mother's knee listening to the story of Jonah being swallowed by the whale, a little fellow looked up seriously into her face and asked, "Ma, did Jonah wear his slippers in the whale's belly? Because, if he didna, the tackets in his boots wad tear a' its puddin's."
Dr. John Ker of Edinburgh, in his recently published volume of reminiscences—Memories Grave and Gay—tells of how "in a Banffshire manse one Sunday evening, all the family were sitting quietly reading in the drawing-room, when the youngest boy, with a laudable thirst for knowledge, went up to his mother and asked a question, for the answer to which she referred him to me. Coming up to me, he said—
"'Mr. Ker, is it true that the devil goes about like a roaring lion?"
"'It must,' I replied, 'be true, for it is in the Bible.'
"This was followed by another question which I did not attempt to answer—