Evening star., 1914-12-27

And more, II the hands are Kept neat
but, after all, they have supreme consola-
ton. They sit at one of the primal sources
of human Joy; for from the schoolroom, as
from the nursery, humor comes pure and
undefled; it droppeth like the gentle dew
from heaven, untouched by artihciaGty, un-
marred by strain or stress.
Who would not endure even the drudgeEy
of correcting examination papers now and
then to encounter such gems as?-
Plumage is the foliage of the parrot or hen.
A vacuum is nothing with the air sucked out
Of it.
college is a cemetery of learning.
The tariff: place of worship.
Anticlimax is brand of chewing tobacco.
Antifat and antitoXin those new, cheap
breakfast foods
Frequently the charm of such definitions
lies in their very aptness. The Tennessee
youth who described volcano as "a noun
tain where the world busts through and
the crater as "the place where it spits OUT
had his facts; though he clothed them in
somewhat unusual terms. There was pic
turesqueness in the small boys terming a
natural history museum "a dead circus
And joy was brought to the heart of Mark
Twain by the sentence, "There's a great
many donkeys in theological gardens"
SOMETIMES, Of course, the pupil will
- come to grief, and this is specially likely
to occur in those distressing cases where one
is asked to define a word and then use it.
One attempt ran thus, "Despot-a ruler
that is feared Me teacher swatted me wild
her despot." Another was hardly more sue
cessful in defining vengeance as mean de-
sire to get even and then quoting, "'Fen-
geance is mine. | will repay saith the
Lord"
The most startling misconception, how
ever, is cited by Professor Boynton of the
University of Chicago.
A horror-stricken parent saw his small
son rise from before the fire one evening,
spit copiousy upon the oriental hearth rug,
plant his heel accurately upon the spot,
swing round like top, drop down again,
and resume his reading.
"My boy, he inquired, would you mind
telling me the meaning of that extraordinary
performance
II was just doing what they tell us to do
in school, was the ingenious answer.
"They say, act out your reading"
"And you have there?'
"The Lays of Ancient Rome"
The father held out his hand, the boy
obediently brought the book, and the father
read:
When the oldest cask is opened,
And the largest lamp is lit,
And the chestnuts glow in the embers,
And the kid turns on the spit.
SOME of the most brilliant examples of
~ schoolroom humor are found in child
hoods first tampering with literature.
Could the most practised hand have better
achieved bizarre literary effect than did
the small boy when, in an epistolary @com-
position" he wrote?-"You know Willie
Millers neck? Well, he fell into the pond
up to it."
Could the most uncompronising realist
have done more than did the neophyte
whose teacher had hidden him attempt no
flights of fancy, but simply be himself and
write what was in him9 ave should not
attempt fites of fancy but rite what is in
us. In me there is my stummick, lungs,
hart, liver, two apples, one piece of pie, one
stick of lemon candy, and my dinner"
Consider also this first descent of the
divine aff1atus upon New England kinder
garten tot:
See the little gold fish swimming in the globe.
See the little robin singing in the tree,
Who teached them to fly together?
Who stuck the fur upon their breasts?