READING "PICKWICK" TO CHILDREN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17139, 19 April 1919, Page 4 (Supplement)

READING "PICKWICK" TO CHILDREN.

A correspondent explains how he tried reading "The Pickwick Papers" to children, and found the experiment very successful. Ho began with the frosty drive on the Mtiggleton Telegraph. A chuckle, he says, broke the solemn, round-eyed hush when the implacable codfish fell suddenly into the boot with the guard after him. Then how foolish and ungrateful it appeared ever to have doubted Mr. Pickwick. He had scarcely opened lis mouth save to ask the guard to drink hie health in hot brandy and water, when he was pronounced by one of the audience to be "a lovely person." And does not that journey contain all the eternal romance of (travel which to the modern child touches its highest point in hardbciled eggs in the train?

It will be found, - the correspondent adds, that , Some dexterity in the art of skipping is needed.- Jokes about young Indies standing coyly on the top-rail of n stile are apt to have all the wind taken out of their sails by the question: "Why oiioaldn't Mr. Pickwick see their ankles?" It is' far wiser to avoid such problems by a bold and masterly policy. Yet to skip well is not easy. It seems to be more than an art, an instinct. Your great skippers have a wonderful eye for country. Without lifting their eyes they can see dull or grown-up tracts coming afar off, and leap over -them with never so much as break in their stride. The unskilful, on the other hand, boggle Badly—ha'ing and humming with long lame gaps and futile paraphases that are bound to be discovered and resented. Again, if the suggestion be not blasphemous, it may be well to make some changes in the text. Until they have read Pickwick aloud perhaps even the most learned have not quite realised what facetiously long words, if one may so term them, the author, is fond of using. They are often quire incomprehensible to young listeners, The red-headed man, for example, had a grin extending "from one auricular organ to the other," and we love him for it. Nevertheless, we may make a reverent and temporary emendation.