laid
an egg every day. "Oh, that's nothing," retorted the bishop's daughter;
"Papa lays a foundation-stone every week."

The precocious child, even when thoroughly well-meaning, is a source of
terror by virtue of its intense earnestness. In the days when Maurice
first discredited the doctrine of Eternal Punishment, some learned and
theological people were discussing, in a country house near Oxford, the
abstract credibility of endless pain. Suddenly the child of the house
(now its owner), who was playing on the hearth-rug, looked up and said,
"But how am I to know that it isn't hell already, and that I am not in
it?"--a question which threw a lurid light on his educational and
disciplinary experiences. Some of my readers will probably recollect the
"Japanese Village" at Knightsbridge--a pretty show of Oriental wares
which was burnt down, just at the height of its popularity, a few years
ago. On the day of its destruction I was at the house of a famous
financier, whose children had been to see the show only two days before.
One of them, an urchin of eight, immensely interested by the news of the
fire, asked, not if the pretty things were burnt or the people hurt, but
this one question, "Mamma, was it insured?" Verily, _bon chat chasse de
race_. The children of an excellent but unfortunate judge are said to
have rushed one day into their mother's drawing-room exclaiming, "Dear
Mamma, may we have jam for tea? One of Papa's judgments has been upheld
in the Court of Appeal." An admirable story of commercial precocity
reaches me from one of the many correspondents who have been good enough
to write to me in connection with this book. It may be commended to the
promoters of that class of company which is specially affected by the
widow, the orphan, and the curate. Two small boys, walking down
Tottenham Court Road, passed a tobacconist's shop. The bigger remarked,
"I say, Bill, I've got a ha'penny, and, if you've got one too, we'll
have a penny smoke between us." Bill produced his copper, and Tommy
diving into the shop, promptly reappeared with a penny cigar in his
mouth. The boys walked side by side for a few minutes, when the smaller
mildly said, "I say, Tom, when am I to have a puff? The weed's half
mine." "Oh, you shut up," was the business-like reply. "I'm the Chairman
of this Company, and you are only a shareholder. _You can spit._"

Mr. H.J. Barker, who is, I believe, what Mr. Squeers called "A Educator
of Youth," has la