Incredible Creatures For Credulous Children

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 352, 12 May 1928, Page 27

Incredible Creatures For Credulous Children

By

IN CHINA There -was a little China boy. His mother called him Ching, He used to conjure with the cups, And almost anything. But once he juggled with a weight, A heavy one, you know, He threw it up just like a cup. And caught it on his toe. SCOOP THE BUTTON It isn’t always easy to think of some new game when you have some little friends in to play with you, is it? Perhaps this game of Scoop the Button will amuse you, though. For the game you require a number of buttons —-just old ones from mother’s work-basket—and a tin box lid for each player. These don’t need to be big, of course, just the lids from cocoatins will do excellently. The buttons must be scattered over the table around which the players sit. And at the given signal “Go,” everyone tries to scoop up a button at a time. Remember that the buttons must not be touched by the hands or pushed by the arms or anything. Only the lid must be used. The player who maanges to scoop up the greatest number of buttons, of course, wins the game. Instead of buttons, you can use the discs of a game of Tiddley Winks or Ludo. In this case each player should have a separate colour, qnd the one to scoop up all his discs first wins. RIDDLES When can a horse be blue in colour? A bay at the seaside is usually blue. Can you tell me a tap from which you cannot draw water?—A tap on the door. When is a silver cup likely to run? — When it is chased. THE TRUANT A little boy who wanted to play truant from school rang up his head master, and in his gruffest voice said, “Sir, Johnny is not well; will you please excuse him from school?” Master (suspiciously): “Who is speaking?” Little boy (flustered): “My father!” A LONG TONGUE-TWISTER You’ll be very, very clever if you can memorise this very long tongue-twis-ter. You'll find it fun trying, though. Please, doctor, when one doctor doctors another doctor, does the doctor doing the doctoring doctor the other doctor as the other doctor wants to be doctored, or does the doctor doing the doctoring doctor the other doctor as the doctor doing the doctoring wants to doctor him? It’s a rather wonderful sentence, too,

W.B.T. and G.E.M.

BOBBIN Richard and John were very fond of their rabbits. . And their father was just as fond of his big. beautiful garden, but he was very kind about the pets. He said that they were not to be cooped up in hutches, but live on a waste piece of ground which he would give them, wired in above the ground and deep beneath it, so large a pen that the rabbits could play among the long grass and pretend that they were free. So all went very well with the lopeared and the fluffy ones till one day Richard saved a small wild brown rabit from a stoat and brought him. more dead than alive, to the enclosure. Bobbin (that was the name they gave him) soon got over his fright and became fat and saucy. Ho dug much better than the other pampered rabbits: it was not long before he tunnelled beneath the deeply-sunk wire and made his way out to the open again. It was very ungrateful, really, to his little masters, for he showed all the other rabbits the bolthole.

Next morning Bunnytown was empty; the garden was full of its furry people, nibbling what they ought not to.

After an exciting day the hole was blocked up and the rabbits caught and put back in the enclosure—all except Bobbin. Nobody wanted him back, even if they had been able to catch him. But the worst of it was that he would not go away. He haunted the kitchen garden, doing all the damage that one small rabbit can do. Nobody could catch him.

“Another row of choice seedlings gobbled up!” said father, coming into breakfast in a fury, and asking. Will nobody get rid of this wretched rabbit?” At that moment Klaus, the Alsatian dog. napping by the fire, bethought himself of some business outside, and left the room. “He is spoiling all the garden.” said father. “There is no help for it. I must take my gun and shoot him.” At this a great outcry went up for Bobbin’s life, and just a day’s grace to catch him alive and put him back in the warren. “Boys,” said mother suddenly, turning from the window, “here comes Klaus galloping across the big lawn, and he has got something in his mouth! Why did your father say what he did in front of him? That dog understands everything!” In came Klaus, his sneering black lips and fierce wolf’s jaws full of a brown, furry body. Carrying it very carefully, he went straight to his shrinking mistress, and triumphantly he laid in her lap a fat, frigtbened rabbit, quite unhurt and very much alive. Then down sat the big dog, panting for applause! WHY NOT? Isn’t this a funny old world? There are so many things we do not see. Here are a few of them: The toes on the foot of the bed. The key of a lock of hair. The conductor on the band of a hat. The blankets on the bed of the river. The nose on the face of the clock.