T. J. Macnamara

"A focus is a thing that looks like a mushroom, but if you eat it you will feel different to a mushroom."—SMALL GIRL.

Of course children's witticisms are always unconscious. They have taken the idiomatic quite literally: not quite caught our meaning; missed the right word in favour of another that is curiously like it in sound.

Reasonably enough the idiom is extremely troublesome to the child-mind. "The doctor says my mother has one foot in the grave," wrote a little girl the other day in a Composition Exercise. "That is not true. She has both feet in bed!" Again, if people will talk about "going it bald-headed," or about being "stony-hearted" or "iron-fisted" or "brazen-faced," and so on, they must naturally expect young children to accept the phraseology in its literal sense. Hence amusing misconceptions.

Again, as I say, it is often a question of not having quite got the right word. Having mumbled The Lord's Prayer every day for a year or so, we ultimately get the young Cockney who is found to be rendering "Lead us not into temptation" as "Lead us not into Thames Station"—a London police court shunned of all good costers and others. So too, taught that the Epiphany is a Manifestation, we condone readily the mistake of the little girl who, to her teacher's complete and abiding mystification, insisted that the Epiphany was "the-man-at-the-station!"

Owing its origin to the same sort of misconception is the genuinely funny answer of the boy who wrote, "The marriage customs of the ancient Greeks were that a man had only one wife, and this was called Monotony!"

Then, again, the child-mind is absolutely fresh and alert. It is to the adult mind as is the plastic clay to the baked brick. It is not already overlaid with impressions; it is not restricted in its elasticity by the petrifying effects of already-received preconceptions; it is refreshingly new and instantly impressionable. It is because of this that a youngster wrote: "A vacuum is nothing shut up in a box." It is because of this, too, that the little girl said: "The zebra is like a horse, only striped and used to illustrate the letter Z." Owing its origin to the same freshness of view, we get the following: Two children being awakened one morning and being told that they had a new little brother, were keen, as children are, to know whence and how he had come. "It must have been the milkman," said the girl. "Why the milkman?" asked her little brother. "Because it says on his cart, 'Families supplied,'" replied the sister. Not less quaintly ingenuous and fresh is the reply of a little chap in a Nature-study lesson. "Think," said the teacher, "of a little creature that wriggles about in the earth and sometimes comes to the top through a tiny hole." A small boy in a pinafore put up his hand joyously. "Well?" queried the teacher. "A worm," said the small boy. "Yes," said the teacher, "now think of another little creature that wriggles about in the earth and comes to the top through a small hole." Up went the joyous hand again. "Well?" asked the teacher. "Another worm!" shouted Tommy in triumph.

The workings of the child-mind, the quaint, homely wisdom and shrewdness that it not infrequently displays, and the pathos that—so far as the working-class children are concerned—it so often discovers, are engrossingly interesting. Take the case of the reply to the Inspector who, putting a "Mental Arithmetic" question, asked: "If I had three glasses of beer on this table and your father came in and drank one, how many would be left?" "None, sir," at once replied a very small urchin. "But you don't understand my question," retorted the inspector, proceeding to repeat it. This he did several times, always receiving the same unwavering assurance, "None, sir!" At last he said: "Ah, my boy, it is clear you don't know mental arithmetic." "But I know my father," answered the boy.

Again, there is the instance of the little chap driven into desperation and escaping by a wild stretch of the imagination. "Who made the world?" snapped out a rather testy inspector years ago to a class of very small boys. No answer. Several times he repeated the question, getting louder and more angry each time. At last a poor little fellow, kneading his eyes vigorously with his knuckles, blubbered out: "Please, sir, it was me. But I won't do it any more!" Which recalls to me the old Scotch chestnut: "Why did the priest and the Levite pass by on the other side, child?" "Because the puir man had been robbed already!" was the reply.

Much of the school-room humour purveyed for the delectation of us elders by the unconscious wits of the schoolroom is provoked by quaint pieces of "Composition." Of these I give later a number. One of the most amusing is that by a young lady in the Sixth Standard, who very frankly and faithfully expresses her views on "Schoolmasters." She writes so candidly, that I produce her essay here as a wholesome corrective to professional vanity and as an acute witness to the necessity to "see ourselves as others see us":—

"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."

It is very curious to note how children are attracted by Mr. Chamberlain. He and King Edward are the two public men whose names appear most often in their "Pieces of Composition." Such men as the Prime Minister, the Duke of Devonshire, and even Lord Rosebery—always popular figures with adults—have no attractions for the youngsters. Indeed, Mr. Chamberlain provokes one of the funniest things in the whole of the anecdotes which I have ventured to relate. "He is a man," writes a young hopeful, "who broke out among other people!" Isn't that just delicious? I am half inclined to think that the distinguished Parliamentarian who just now leads the House of Commons would utter a fervent "Hear! hear!" were that simple and yet striking answer rehearsed to him.

What quiet humour, too, there is in that rare definition of "Etc.": "It is a sign used to make believe you know more than you do!" Take, again, the reason given for David's preference. Why would he rather be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord? "Because he could walk about outside while the sermon was being preached!" Could anything be more convincing? Or take, again, that rare new axiom that outeuchres Euclid: "When you are in the middle you are half over!" Did ever the self-evident truth stand more completely foursquare and without need of proof?

Still again, take the reason given for putting a hyphen between bird and cage: "For the bird to perch on!" Not less conclusive is the little one's reply in the lesson on "The elephant and his trunk." "Now my dear," says the amiable and hopeful infants' mistress, "you shall tell me what your nose is for." "Us haves it to wipe, miss!" Which recalls the rough, commonsense reproof which a Roman Catholic priest once gave a distinguished inspector who was examining a class of ragged little Standard II. gamins in a poor town school in the western country: "What, boys," he asked, "is the function of a verb?" Blank silence reigned until the priest stepped up to the inspector and said sotto voce: "You are an old ass——! It's as much as we can do here to get these youngsters to stand upright and keep their noses clean!"

But let me without further running—and more or less impertinent—comment try to classify my budget of anecdotes and let them speak for themselves. I will only add to this critical comment the fact that the stories which follow have been collected assiduously and stored up jealously during the thirty years I have been connected with schoolmastering either as Board School teacher, a London School Board member, or as editor of the organ of the National Union of Teachers, The Schoolmaster, in the columns of which journal most of them have from time to time appeared.