CHAPTER IV.
"I NOW TAKE MY PEN IN HAND."
A policeman passes.
SMITH MINOR, aged 9: "I shall be a bobby when I grow up!"
SMITH MAJOR, aged 11: "No! my dear child. You'll never have the feet for it!"
The curious workings of the child-mind are nowhere more conspicuously illustrated than in the little essays and "pieces of composition" which they are set to write. Of course many of the children in the poorer elementary schools possess only a very limited and very primitive vocabulary. Hence, when they adventure upon rather long and unfamiliar words—conscientiously trying to reproduce what they have just heard the teacher say in the general verbal description of the story to be committed by them to paper—they often achieve fantastic results. But far more interesting is the fresh and original view of a given situation which emerges. Far more interesting, too, are the homely wit and the shrewd wisdom which these wholly delightful little efforts display. Let these attest.
"It would be worth it."—"What would you do with £5?" having been set to a class of girls, the following was one of the forthcoming replies: "Dear Teacher,—If I had five pounds of my very own to do just what I like with, I should go on a railway journey and pull the alarm signal and just see what really would happen. Of course the five pounds would go to pay the fine; but I think it would be worth it.—I remain your loving ——."
Man's Cleverness.—In a composition on Man a boy wrote, among other things: "Man is the only animal that can strike a light, and also he is the only animal that blows his nose."