Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/536

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By the Yard

Mr. Elephant. "I suppose at that price you will paint me full figure, life size?"
Artist. "What do you take me for—a house-painter?"


The City Child

HIS playground is the stony street,
By soot and dust defiled,
Or some fair park, all prim and neat—
The little city child.

Ah, not for him the meadows wide,
The brook that tumbles o'er
Its shady sand; the soft hillside,
The forest's piny floor.

He cannot know the thrilling joy
Of living things and wild,
But seeks to find it in a toy—
Poor little city child.

L. M. S.


A Creator

FOUR YEAR-OLD Kingsley had heard at Sunday-school the story of the creation. The head of a favorite doll having come off, he found he could make it stay, at least for a time, by planting it firmly on the shoulders. From this he drew his own theological deductions, and hastening to his mother with his discovery, he exhibited his trick, with the comment, "See, mamma, I'm God."


The Evidence

MY father says, and certainly my father ought to know,
Our ancestors were monkeys, like the monkeys in the show,
And that it's written in a book where any one may read;
But all the same my mother thinks a different thing indeed.
I found that out on Sunday, when we came from church, and she
Was telling father we behaved,—oh, well, outrageously,—
And that we twisted, and we squirmed, and wriggled round the pew.
And when he laughed, and said, "Why, that's the way I used to do,"
Then mother said, "The evidence induces me to feel
That their paternal ancestor must once have been an eel."