MARCH 249 



their persons nor lying on the floor, as in the more 

 rational world of dolldom ! And what mysterious and 

 terrible fate did " being killed on the spot " signify ? 

 What spot ? or, rather, which spot ? for we invariably 

 referred it to some bodily blemish of our own. 



' Holy Writ, of course, offered countless problems to 

 the imagination, and so did the services of the Church. 

 The collects were fraught with a meaning their authors 

 never dreamed of. "The ills which the devil Orman 

 worketh against us " referred, we knew well enough, to 

 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 

 company no doubt, but one with whom he had esta- 

 blished friendly relations during the week. " Keep thy 

 servant from consumptious sins," we said devoutly, for 

 doubtless a consumptious sin was connected remotely 

 with the store-room. 



' 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 " 



