CHILDREN'S CORNER.

Evening Star, Issue 12067, 12 December 1903, Page 9

CHILDREN'S CORNER.

TOO MANY SWEETS. The Prussian Minister of Education has issued to all schools under, his control a circular in which attention is.called to the ever-increasing number • of automatic machines for the sale oi chocolates, and other sweets, and asks teachers of schools u> use every influence with the children to prevent excesses. TOUCHING GRATITUDE. There is a good story told of a golfer. He was playing when he noticed the ragged condition of his caddie. Rather touched by this, he gave the boy something to get some food with, and promised him a suit of old clothes. Later, hearing about a dependent; mother, he despatched a load of coal and a round of beef. The lad. was very grateful indeed for all this kindness, and with hid eyes brimming with tears, he tried to say something befitting the occasion. " Please, sir ," he began, and then he halted. "Oh, that's all right, my boy," said _ the benefactor, cheerfully; "My be a good lad, that's all." Then the caddie could no longer restrain himself. The kindly thought which Jay at the bottom of his heart broke through. "Please, sir," he cried, "I'm sorry you're such a bad player V DUELLING IN DISFAVOR. Signor Riccioni, a young secretary to the Governor of Erythrea, last year mayried a Roman lady and took ber to Asmara. She was much admired by the limited and mostly military European colony. The husband discovered that an intimate friend m<med Sigcor Craverie, a distinguished elderly commander of carabineers and a dead shot, had had a meeting with his wife, and he challenged him to a duel. As a result the husband was killed, and the issue of the encounter "has raised a cry of indignation against duelling, which is becoffiihovery x^revalent. A NEW ARITHMETIC. "I'm bound to be a genius," said little Johnny Green; "I'm going to write a book to be the best one ever seen. Til call it ' Green's Arithmetic,' and in. it will be rules To knock out tbs old-fogeyness so rampant in our schools. "Addition I'll have all fixed up so that when, four and eight Are added in together you will find the answer straight. At blackboard you won't need to stand and think with all your might, For whatever number you put down it's sure to come out right. "The same way with the tables: I'll have a new set made. When teacher calls: 'Quick, seven times nine?' you needn't be afraid. Just- raise your hand and speak right out, and say it's eighiy-two; You'll have my book "to back you up, so what can teacher do? "Through fractions, cancellation, and the awful cent, per cent, m have the answers as they chance to be convenient. You needn't ruin your poor eyes a-atadying at night, For be your answer what it may, ifs bound to be all right. "Eight nines will make just forty-one, and two plus four make five. Subtracting four from nine leaves three, as sure as you're aiive. You'll work out fractions by the yard, and do them just us quick As lightning, when you're helped along by ' Green's Arithmetic.' "But the other night mother was cutting us a pie— There were Ben, and Dick, and Dorothy, and Cousin Fred and I; Said mother, as she poised the knife: 'Tell me the answer, son; By your new scheme how many times will five go into oner" "My system says you need not think, and so I answered ' Four.' And when she quartered that whole pie perhaps they didn't, roar. I didn't get the smallest bite, and that's the reason why In 'truly things' I won't have 'Green's Arithmetic' apply." —By George William Daley, in "St. Nicholas.' CHILDREN'S PRAYERS. In an amusing article in the ' Fortnightly 5 Mr E. H. Cooper tells of some juvenile devotions. " I know," he says, " a young lady who has been promoted to say her prayers to herself, but scorns such dull business, and when it comes to a petition for blessings on relatives and friends will settle down to enjoy herself like an actress in the crack scene of a play. Her parents come first; then all such relations as are present, the suppliant keeping half an eye all the time on each person to see how they take it; then a long list of her mother's 'young men' and her own, which, her acquaintances being chiefly military, gives her audience the impression that she is going straight through the Army List. Occasionally the name of one of her hearers is ostentatiously left oat, but not often, because the young person likes numbers. Her petition is an elaborately displayed visitors' list in which quantity and quality ere equally important An eight-year-old person of my acquaintance was extremely angry at being commanded to pray for tlie Boer wounded as well as the English during the late war. Her usual war prayer was s. very bellicose affair:—'Bless our dear, beautiful soldiers, and our darling sailors, and don't let any of them get hurt, and make them well soon if they must be, and send all the Boers to Hell. - ' To this her guardian commanded that there should be added a petition for the Boer wounded, but the little lady did not mean to tolerate such half-hearted nonsense. Under severe compulsion she added the required words, but a bystander overheard a soft whisper at the end of the prayer: ' Never mind abput the Boers.' The two nicest children of my acquaintance have a way when they are tired of resumipg the day's quarrels in their evening prayers. ' God' forgive Prances,' prays one of them, 'for pushing me into the fountain to-day while I was standing on the edge, and then daring to say that I felled in. . . .' It is not etiquette, of course, to interrupt a praying companion, so Frances reserves her answer for her own prayers. ' God forgive Marjorie for daring to say that I pushed her into the fountain, when she truthfully knows she felled in her own self, and that Nanna telled her not to stand near the edge. . . .'"