Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 July 1885 — Children as Pretenders. [ARTICLE]

Children as Pretenders.

What pretenders most children are 1 They love to impose upon themselves as well as upon others. “I must sit down and study this scholar stuff,” says a little boy in petticoats who can neither read nor write. “O, brother, you smile like the dawn of the day!” says one infant to another, and then in an undertone asks: “Mamma, what is the ‘dawn of the day ?’ ” To children the mysterious always appears imposing. Willie, hearing his father say that Willie’s grandmother had expressed the wish to be cremated when she dies, listened in open-mouthed wonder, and went to a neighbor’s at once to communicate the intelligence that his “grandma is going to be cream-tartared. ” The same boy, aged 5, though several years younger than his sister, feels an almost manly superiority over her. They were talking of something, when he said: “I knew that before you were born.” Alice, meekly indignant, said: “Why, Willie, you were not born then.” “Well, the lump of dirt I was made of knew it. ”