School-Room Humour

by T. J. Macnamara

"Schoolmasters are a class of people who have a tendency to a bad temper, and who are generally armed with a cane. We have a very good sample at our school, for we have a schoolmaster who is, as a rule, 'better in health than temper,' especially when we have Geography. To hear most schoolmasters talk you would think that they never did wrong in their lives; and, of course, they will tell you that when they went to school they never used to talk, and they never got the stick; but whether they used to talk in school or not I do not know. All I can say is, that they can talk like magpies when they are outside. Well, I suppose we must have schoolmasters, or we should all be very ignorant indeed——."

Much fun is got out of the weird and fearfully contrived "Notes" which teachers receive from the poorer working-class parents. I have not dwelt much on these, as I never see one of these "Notes" without feeling more inclined to cry than to laugh. If the State had known and had done its duty earlier there would be less melancholy fun in these self-same parental "Notes." I will only dare to reproduce two here:—

"Pleas Sur, Jonnie was kep home to day. I have had twins. It shant ocur again. Yours truely Mrs. Smith."

The other is given in the stories which follow; but it is worth repeating:—

"Plese excuse mary being late as she as been out on a herring!"

It is the fact, and it is not altogether to be wondered at, that the Scripture lesson is a prime source of juvenile undoing. The proper names used are so hard and unfamiliar, and the scope of the subject is so often so far beyond the children's capacity, that the wonder is that the misconceptions and errors are so few. Then, again, the children mostly learn their Scripture texts and so on viva voce from the teacher. Many repetitions cause them to distort the words; and then when they come to write them down the result is, not to put too fine a point upon it, as Mr. Snagsby would say, startling. The classical instance is that given in the report of the "Newcastle" Commission on the Condition of Elementary Education in 1855. The questions were: "What is thy duty towards God?" and "What is thy duty towards thy neighbour?" Here are the two answers given by the Commissioners:—

"My duty toads God is to bleed in Him, to fering and to loaf withold your arts, withold my mine, withold my sold, and with my sernth, to whirchp and give thanks, to put my old trash in Him, to call upon Him, to onner His old name and His world, and to save Him truly all the days of my life's end." "My dooty toads my nabers, to love him as thyself, and to do to all men as I wed thou shall and to me; to love onner, and suke my farther and mother; to onner and to bay the Queen and all that are pet in a forty under her; to smit myself to all my gooness, teaches, sportial pastures, and marsters, &c., &c."

One of the funniest of mistakes made by the daily verbal reiteration of phrases neither understood nor seen in black and white is the story of the boy who came back from a visit to an aquarium and was very disappointed that they had not shown him "the timinies." After some cross-examination the mystery was cleared up. It will be fully appreciated if I recite the fact that "in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is."

What I may, for lack of a better definition, describe as an oblique method of applying what those very learned and very dull people the Psychologists call "the Principle of Association of Ideas" is another fruitful source of laughable errors. For instance, teach a child that "tigress" is the feminine of "tiger"; now proceed to tell it that "a fort" is a place in which soldiers live; the odds are that if you ask it at once what "a fortress" is it will say that it is a place for soldiers' wives to live in! So it will tell you that "Shero" is the feminine of "Hero," and "Madam" of "Adam"! You may also get "Buttress" as "the wife of a Butler." Certainly I have seen "Pedigree is a Schoolmaster," and "Filigree is a list of your descendants!"

Tell a youngster that "an optician" is a person who looks after your eyes and then ask what "a pessimist" is, the odds are some little gamin will reply, "A person who looks after your feet," or "your hands," or "your ears," or "your legs," as the fancy strikes him. Describe "an Apostle" and then say, "Now what's an Epistle?" and you may get, "The wife of an Apostle." You may also get "Primate" as the wife of "a Prime Minister."