t
Miss Jill from "tumbling," or even in such a way as to break her fall
and make it easier for her, there would have been some reason for the
popularity of such a record. As it is, there is no way to account for
it except the fact that it is simple and rhythmic and children like it.
This rhyme, however, in the original, is equal to "Jack and Jill" in
rhythm and rhyme, has as good a story, exhibits a more scientific
tumble, with a less tragic result, and contains as good a moral as that
found in "Jack Sprat."

It is as popular all over North China as "Jack and Jill" is throughout
Great Britain and America. Ask any Chinese child if he knows the
"Little Mouse," and he reels it off to you as readily as an
English-speaking child does "Jack and Jill." Does he like it? It is a
part of his life. Repeat it to him, giving one word incorrectly, and he
will resent it as strenuously as your little boy or girl would if you
said,

Jack and Jill
Went DOWN the hill

Suppose you repeat some familiar rhyme to a child differently from the
way he learned it and see what the result will be.

Having obtained this rhyme, I asked Mrs. Yin if she knew any more. She
smiled and said she knew "lots of them." I induced her to tell them to
me, promising her five hundred cash (about three cents) for every rhyme
she could give me, good, bad, or indifferent, for I wanted to secure
all kinds. And I did. Before I was through I had rhymes which ranged
from the two extremes of the keenest parental affection to those of
unrefined filthiness. The latter class however came not from the nurses
but from the children themselves.

When I had finished with her I had a dozen or more. I soon learned
these so that I could repeat them in the original, which gave me an
entering wedge to the heart of every man, woman or child I met.

One day, as I rode through a broom-corn field on the back of a little
donkey, my feet almost dragging on the ground, I was repeating some of
these rhymes, when the driver running at my side said:

"Ha, you know those children's songs, do you?"

"Yes do you know any?"

"Lots of them," he answered.

"Lots of them" is a favorite expression with the Chinese.

"Tell me some."

"Did you ever hear this one?"

"Fire-fly, fire-fly,
Come from the hill,
Your father and mother
Are waiting here still.
They've brought you some sugar,
Some candy, and meat,