Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Bookrell had first to be evaded, and then Mr Foster, who manifested a most amiable and pressing desire to accompany me in my walk. I dared not linger, but hastily thrust the phials into the young doctor's hands, telling him I particularly suspected the cooling drink. He informed me that he was going to send them at once to an eminent analyst at one of the London hospitals; and that, if they proved to contain poison, he should instantly apply to a magistrate for a warrant. I could not control my feelings that evening sufficiently well to prevent Mr Foster remarking, as we sat at chess: 'Your walk to-day did not do you much good, Miss Armitage.' 'I have rather a headache,' I hastily answered. It was perfectly true. 'I sat with Edith all the morning, and her room seemed to me very stuffy.' Indeed, I had frequently noticed a strange closeness pervading it, especially when I first entered it in the morning; and I very often found my head the worse for a prolonged sojourn in it. 'As soon as Dr Stevens will allow it, she shall be moved into a larger room,' he answered, as if he wished to evade a discussion of the subject. SOME ANECDOTES OF AMERICAN CHILDREN. The subject of children is one in which every one is more or less interested; for even those who have none of their own were babies themselves in some dim period of the past, and probably most of us have wondered at times what sort of babies we were. Happy they who have it on the authority of those who ought to know, that they were 'well-behaved children'-lumps of good-nature, and never addicted to crying. How kindly does Charles Lamb revert to the days of his childhood, dwelling with something of reverence on the image of that 'young master' whom he could scarcely believe to have been indeed himself, and whose pure memory he cherished as tenderly 'as if it had been a child of some other house,' and not of his parents. So perhaps some of us also have yearned over those little phantoms of the past, our own child-selves. But it is of American children that we have now a few words to say. Perhaps, however, we make a mistake at the outset in calling them _children_ at all, for many of them seem to belong to some species of fairy changelings, so remarkable and almost uncanny is their precocity, and that, too, from the earliest infancy, while they are still in their nurses' arms, or at the bottle. Gilbert's little urchin of the _Bab Ballads_ who chucked his nurse under the chin when she fed him, and vowed by the rap it was excellent pap, was nothing to them. They would be too _blasé_ for such infantine manifestations as these. We have one of them before our 'mind's eye' now, an ideal-looking little maid, with sunny hair, blue eyes, and rosy cheeks, the youngest darling of a happy household. Being of a wakeful disposition, she was indulged with her bottle at night up to the mature age of nearly two years. Her mother, waking once at midnight, was aware of some disturbance in the cot beside her, where baby seemed to be searching vigorously in the moonlight for something. Hoping the little one might forego her search and drop to sleep, the mother lay quiet, when suddenly baby raised her soft fair head, and with the startling question, 'Where de debil is my mouf-piece?' fairly banished all slumber from her fond parent. It must be explained that this occurred in a part of the country where children were liable to overhear the talk of negroes, both indoor and outdoor servants; and this race, as represented in the States of America, are evidently of the opinion of the old sea-captain's Scotch wife who, while agreeing with her minister as to the advisability of her husband's giving up the habit of swearing, was yet constrained to acknowledge that 'nae doubt it was still a great set-off to conversation.' Baby's grandmamma, however, on being informed of this last addition to her darling's vocabulary, remarked somewhat grimly that it was about time the bottle should be given up. The foregoing was scarcely so bad as what a little two-year-old neighbour was guilty of; for on this young scapegrace being mildly remonstrated with for some misdemeanour by his grandfather-a venerable old doctor, of much repute with all who knew him-he retorted, in his half-articulate baby speech, 'Gan-pa, you'se a old fool!'-waking a burst of unhallowed merriment from all within hearing distance. The propensity on the part of their children to use profane language is a source of great uneasiness to American mothers. One lady, the daughter of a clergyman, who had brought her up on strictly old-fashioned principles, was much distressed to note the habit growing on her only child, a fine manly little boy of four years. At her wits' end for a timely cure, she at last resorted to the expedient of a whipping, threatening, with the most unmistakable air of sincerity, that it would be repeated if ever a certain word were used by him again. The morning after this occurrence, Georgie was, as usual, at his spelling lesson with his mother, the task for the day consisting of a string of words all rhyming with 'am.' The first few of them had been accomplished with praiseworthy accuracy, when suddenly the young student came to a dead-stop. 'Go on, sonny,' said his mother encouragingly, not seeing for the moment where the difficulty lay. 'C-a-m-cam,' repeated Georgie in evident embarrassment, the next word apparently presenting some insurmountable obstacle. 'Go on!' insisted his mother-when, with a sudden blurt, out came the monosyllable 'D-a-m-_dam_, a millpond dam,' added Georgie, the threatened punishment being uppermost in his mind. The same little boy had a cousin, a year older than himself, and ages ahead of him in knowledge of the world, so much so, that he would sometimes assume the part of mentor towards his more unsophisticated junior. When the two were together one day, the elder announced his intention of paying a visit to a family living near them. 'But I won't take you with me,' said he. 'Why not?' asked Georgie, disconcerted. 'Because they'll teach you to swear,' returned the other gravely. 'But you go there yourself,' argued little George. 'O yes,' rejoined his senior with a world-worn air; 'I swear already.' Young America does not take kindly to correction in any form, probably resenting it as an infringement of natural liberties. One little boy having been punished for some childish transgression, astonished his family by coming down suddenly from his room up-stairs with a small bundle under his arm, saying, 'I'm going to leave this blessed house.' American children are, as a rule, more practical and less imaginative than those of the old country-inclined from the very beginning to look on life as a struggle, though a pleasant one on the whole, and on the world as their oyster, which they, with their sharp-set wits, must open. They bring this matter-of-fact element even into their devotions. A little girl was promised by her father, on his leaving home |