TEACHER: "On what occasion did Our Lord use the words, 'With God all things are possible'?"
SMALL CHILD: "To the woman who had seven husbands!"
It would be a real novelty to write a book having even the most remote reference to education without bringing this in. But lest the headline should terrify the reader with the fearful apprehension that it is my purpose to plunge once again into the bitter and apparently never-ebbing waters of religious strife, let me hasten to say that I have no such maleficent intention. In the classification of my budget of anecdotes I find I have an abundant selection of those which have arisen in connection with the daily Scripture lesson; and, as I have already said, they represent the richest harvest of all. The reasons for this I have endeavoured to set forth. It only remains for me, in submitting the following stories, to add that no irreverence is intended. There are, I know, some curiously constituted people who find offence in the most ingenuous laugh if provoked by what they deem a sacred subject. I would respectfully yet firmly adjure them not to read the stories which immediately follow.
The Seventh Commandment—New Style.—In the first place the daily viva voce recital of the Commandments leads to quaint distortions when the youngster comes to commit to paper what he has been saying day by day for a year or so. Here are two startling variants on the Seventh of the selfsame Commandments—
"Thou shalt not kick a duckery."
"Thou shalt not come into the country."
Some New Versions of the Tenth.—Here is a weird distortion of the Tenth:—
"Thou shalt not cumt thy neighbours house, thou shalt not cumt thy neighbours wife, mornin' circus, mornin' 'oss, mornin' ass, mor anything that is his."
Quaint in its way, but not so fearfully and wonderfully contrived, is the following misquotation also of the Tenth Commandment:—