254 MORE POT-POURRI 



the deadly practices of some bottled Jinn or Efreet ; 

 and one companion has since confessed that the Pontius 

 Pilate alluded to by the congregation every Sunday was 

 for him the Bonchurch pilot, strayed into strange com- 

 pany, no doubt, but one with whom he had established 

 friendly relations during the week. " Keep thy servant 

 from consumptious sins," we said devoutly, for doubt- 

 less a consumptious sin was connected remotely with the 

 storeroom. 



'What confusion must have reigned in the mind of 

 the white -robed infant we once heard murmuring at his 

 mother's knee the following invocation : 



Tiger, tiger, burning bright,. 



Through the darkness be thou near me ! 



And how fortunate that prayer is not always directly 

 answered ! The words our children use are generally 

 direct and picturesque, coined with a view to their 

 expressive value. We know few terms more felicitous 

 than "a sash -pain," by which a child (the sex is 

 evident) was in the habit of alluding to one of the ills to 

 which flesh is heir. A "rocking-bed" is a better name 

 than a hammock, and a "worm-pool" is evidently the 

 Early Saxon rendering of a whirl -pool, or why should 

 you be in danger of being sucked down by it ? A " poor 

 wheeler" delicately suggests the moral inferiority of 

 square cabs to hansoms. What can be better than a 

 child's definition of drawing: "First you think about 

 something, and then you draw a line round your 

 think"? 



' Sometimes their utterances betray character, as of the 

 little boy who, when the tiger's growls behind the sofa 

 had become too realistic for human endurance, burst 

 forth with "Mother! mother! don't growl so loud; 

 it frightens granny"] or the self-conscious infant who 



