CHILDREN AND DICKENS

Waipa Post, Volume 41, Issue 3220, 1 November 1930, Page 2

CHILDREN AND DICKENS

An experiment, in which he examined a thousand funny stories written by London school children and fifteen hundred written by children in New York, was described by Dr C. W. Kimmins at the Cambridge (England) Sumfmer School. Dr Kimmins found that there were more references to Dickens in the American papers than in the papers from London children. " They love Dickens far more in America than they do in England," he added. One 12-year-old told a story of a man who risked his life to save another from drowning, and who told the coroner, " I looked carefully to make quite sure it was not Lloyd George, and then I pulled him out." It so happened, said Dr Kimmins, that I was going to England in the Mauretania with Mr George, and I told him the story. What amused him most was the concluding paragraph, which read, "This shows that Mr Lloyd George must be a very great man." Dr Kimmins (according to the report in the London News-Chronicle) told several stories of children's funny sayings, among them the following:— A little fellow only three years old was heard speaking as follows into a toy telephone: " Wrong number again, damn."

A tiny boy after his first day at a kindergarten school told his mother: " Some of our chaps roll up in perambulators."

A fond father to please his little girl buried her pet canary in a cigar box. When the child was asked what she was laughing at she replied: " Won't St. Peter be disappointed when he opens the box and finds that there are no cigars ? "