Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-03-23
BLUNDERS IN WORDS
MISTAKES CHILDREN MAKE IN
POETRY AND SONG.
From the New York Evening Post.

From the New York Evening Post.
At a meeting of Sunday school workers
in Iowa this week some excellent advice
was given regarding the need of care In
the choice of songs for children. But 1t
was not against heresies merely or corrupt
ing influences that the teachers were urged
to be on their guard. The danger of using
possible antiquities or phrases open con-
ceiyably to misconstruction was quite as
pressing One little girl had rejected a
five-cent piece offered by her mother for the
contribution box citing as her reason the
familiar song of Hear the pennies drop
ping" There was nothing said of the eff
cacy of nickels in converting the heather.
Another child had come home disappointed
from Sunday school declaring that Jesus
was not there that day. Pressed for the
evidence on which this statement was
based, she said that the superintendent had
given out sing which ran, Jesus Is Call
ing Today"
Stories of this kind in both sacred and
secular fields are familiar enough. A few
years age material for a most entertaining
article was obtained by a teacher who ask
ed her pupils to write down from memory
the words of America" which they could
all sing most periodically. But the reasons
for devotion to country were sometimes
obscure, as In the case of the child who
wrote:
81 love thy rots and chiIis.
Thy woods and temper pills.
Rocks and Rills.
OF course everybody who has absurdities
like this to deal with Immediately offers
the original suggestion that people really
Ought to be more careful" about such
things. But how? The trouble with these
mistakes is that they are not due to in
herent depravity of the children who make
them, but to the perfectly natural substitu-
ton of the familiar for the unfamiliar. Take
the case of the national hymn just recited.
There was, it must be admitted. no valid
excuse for saying rot for rock" One
word is just as familiar as the other, and
even the immature mind ought to have a
vague preference for words that make
sense But ''rills'' is not word of the
family vocabulary at all. It's place Is gen.
orally usurped by creek" A child not
brought up on poetry might round out eight
or ten years without hearing 1t, while
Chilli at least in maiarial communities,
Is truly AL, household WORD TEMPTED hills"
The child could not be expected to under
stand without explanation that by temples
the poet meant churches, and that while
'the little brown church in the vale" is
really more common than the one on the
hilltop, poetic usage justified the figure.
The word temple is used by the man in the
street to mean a. the meeting place Of, OF q
are pictures of ancient ruins which are
also labeled temples but are like moth
ing which the school child has ever seen
at home 1t is unnecessary to observe that
temper and pills bring up decidedly
more familiar ideas than DR.. Smiths
dignified phrase.
For Name, Main.
This same explanation applies to the mis-
take of the little boy who learned one OF
Emerson's famous poems by ear. Not hav-
ing any previous knowledge of the Concord
philosophy, he saw nothing incongruous In
making the poet ask:
HAST thou mai.ned all the birds without gun -
That would be such an extraordinary
feat of agility and sportsmanship, the boy
thought, 1t was no wonder the neophyte
exclaimed
.sOh. be nv friend, and teach me to be thine. = s
1t is probable that in these days of ma
ture study and "hunting with the camera" 1
no boy would make such mistake Pop |
ular science and the Audubon societies have !
10 modified the aboriginal instinct to