MORE ORIGINAL ENGLISH.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 468, 3 May 1890, Page 6

MORE ORIGINAL ENGLISH.

Some Novel Schoolboy Essays. (From Our Special Correspondent.) London, February 28. Mr Henry J. Barker, whose enterbainin essays on Board schoolboys’ work attracted so much attention when they appeared in “Longman’s Magazine” about 18 months ago(and were subsequently sold in “shilling shocker ” form as “ Original English”), resumes his tale in the March issue of the same periodical. One of the best stories told in this instalment relates how the teacher of an anatomy class, who had been giving a lesson on the heart, asked : “ What is the difference between a sheep’s heart and the heart of a man or woman ?” As a matter of fact (I may be permitted to remind the reader) the two have a most remarkable similarity. Amongst others, one poor, pale little lad pub out his hand. “ Well, B ?” I queried. “ Why, sir,” answered the boy, a glow of feeling rising to his cheek, “ a sheep’s heart is the softest, for you can bite a sheep’s heart, but a woman’s heart you breakand then I remembered that poor little B ’s mother had died of a broken heart, the result of a husband’s cruelty and desertion. The Rise of Mr W. H. Smith. Here is a paragraph from an essay on “Kindness”:—“By being kind a person may rise in the world, as the following story will show. Mr Smith was a poor boy. At first he was a paper-boy. One day,, while he was selling his papers, he caught sight of a little girl trying to get across the road, bub could nob for the number of carriages. He at once went to her assistance and carried her safely across the road. A little while after this Mr Smith had a paper-stall on nearly every railway station in England.” The only authority the boy could give for the story was that he had “heard” it, and that “a lot of the boys knew it a 3 well.” “If I Had a Donkey.”

The following effort is a selection from a third standard lad’s composition exercise upon “ The Donkey —“ The Donkey is one of that tribe of beasts on which the cane has no effekb, for the harder you hit it the slower it goes. Your fathers never use a whip for there donkeys, becase they no it would not hurt them. For the Donkey rather likes to feel a whip, as it only tikles him and makes him feel joyfull and hungry. The best thing to punish a Donkey with is firstly a short thick cane for ears and belly ; andsecundly,a boomstick cubintwoforbackboneand backlegs. Hewill thengobetwixb four and five miles an hour. The Donkeys which you see painted yellow and blue on the school pictures are what are called jews asses. These tribes of donkeys go many miles an hour, and will follow there masters like dogs and lambs becose of kindness. The young ones are sometimes called kolbs and foals of asses. Therefore, if you have a niced young donkey show mercy unto it, and it might grow into a kolb or foal of an ass. There is also a tribe of wild asses which prowl upon the top of rocks, and never slip over, even in winter. They are larger than our moddern donkeys, and surer footed. In the night time they climb down, and feed like rabbits upon the poor farmers hard earned vegitebles.” Why the Sea is Salt. The master of a poor Catholic school situated in one of the lowest parts of the metropolis took “ The Sea” as the subject of a “ Friday afternoon ” lesson. In the course of the lesson he asked, “ What should you think it is, my lads, which makes the sea so salt ?” Presently a little collarless and shoeless urchin raised his hand and answered, “Soldiers an’ bloaters, sir.” “Soldiers” is the popular name for reel herrings. The Wrong Boy. A village schoolmaster was told by the parson that he intended to bring a friend next morning to hear the boys put through their paces in religious teaching. They had not received much instruction of that kind ; but it was necessary to do something. Accordingly he called his little grey smocked “first class” before him, arranged the members in a certain order, grafted into each blossoming yokel the particular question he intended to put to him in the morning, and likewise added the correct answer. After priming the young hopefuls over and over again with their respective answers, he ventured to dismiss them. Next morning, while the visitors were being awaited, boy No. 2 was told to carry out two stone ink-bottles, into the back porch, and ordered to clean off the great streaks of ink and the patches of matted dust. Shortly afterwards the two visitors walked in. The master, quite forgetting that one of his first-class boys was absent in the back-yard, commenced to put his questions to the class in the particular order which ho had arranged and Pointing to one boy, he asked, “ What is that part of you, my lad, which can never die ?” “ My soul, sir,” smartly replied the rustic, with an air of confidence and decision which was really quite admirable and surprising in ono so young. The visitors nodded their approval, and the dominie continued his interrogations. “Now you, my boy,” he said, pointing to. the third boy in the back row,“ Tell us w,ho made you.” Now,the lad thus addressed occupied the very position which had been vacated by the industrious pupil out in the porch. Accordingly, this was not bis proper question : and, remembering the master’s positive instructions that he was only to give a certain answer to a certain question, he bravely remained dumb and quiescent. “ Will you be quick and tell me, sir?” the master cried out angrily, never dreaming, of course, that any hitch had occurred. No ; the lad never opened hi 3 lips or twitched a muscle. Possibly he thought the master was “ trying it on ” with him. “ Come, my dear child,” the visitor ventured to interject, seeing the painful chagrin of the dominie, “ you should try to give your master some sort of answer. Surely you know, my lad, that it was God who made you ?” “ No, sir, it wanna me !” the lad at last burst forth, “I’m sure it wanna, sir ! The boy as God made is outside washin’t’ inkpots !” A Fervent Tubber. The extract which follows is the latter portion of a Third Standard lad’s essay on “Cleanliness”:—Do not go and say that you are feared of making yourself clean, just becose it is cold and it hurts to get the dirt off, or becose the suds get in your eye. For when you are clean, people do not edge away from you, never mind about your clothes, but they say unto you like our teache- that it is next to godlyness. Be thankful unto him becose your mothers can afford soap, and becose they make you use it. Also when your mother puts her finger down your coat-neck afore breakfast, and peeps to see if there’s any black there, and then sends you back to the sink again to wash yourself better, say unto- her, yes mother, also smiling. On Saturday nights say also unto her, mother don’t forget to get my bath-tub reddy for me, and a new peace of soap, for I love to wash myself ’course of cleanliness for it is next to godlyness. Do nob be the game as them there Blacks, and Amerikens,

and Ingoos, which just splashes their faces with water and no soap, and never gets inside of a tub, only paddlin about bits of rivers. When you say to a dirty boy, “ Dirty Dick wants the stick,” only say it about once, so as he cant say as you are wickid. Say unto him, look at the thoteful cat, which spits on its pores just to get a bit of lather for a fair start, and then wipes it nose, and into its eyes, also behind its ears, not counting over. Then say unto him as it will actshelly lick itself where it cant get its peres, rather then be hitching anywheres round. Tell him to look at the necks of masters and superintendents and preachers, and he will never find a ring, which is allwaya a sine as you have not gone far down.”