96, will testify:

WASHINGTON, April 7.--The lawn in front of the White
House this morning was littered with paper bags, the dyed shells
of eggs, and the remains of Easter luncheon baskets. It is said
that a large part of the lawn must be resodded. The children,
shut out from their usual romp in the grounds at the back of the
mansion, made their way into the front when the sun came out in
the afternoon, and gambolled about at will, to the great injury
of the rain-soaked turf.

The police stationed in the grounds _vainly endeavored to
persuade the youngsters to go away_, and were finally successful
only through pretending to be about to close all the gates for
the night.

It is, perhaps, superfluous to say that this kind of bringing up
hardly tends to make the American child an attractive object to the
stranger from without. On the contrary, it is very apt to make the
said stranger long strenuously to spank these budding citizens of a
free republic, and to send them to bed _instanter_. So much of what I
want to say on this topic has been well said by my brother Findlay
Muirhead in an article on "The American Small Boy," contributed to the
_St. James's Gazette_, that I venture to quote the bulk of that
article below.

The American Small Boy

The American small boy is represented in history by the youthful
George Washington, who suffered through his inability to invent a
plausible fiction, and by Benjamin Franklin, whose abnormal
simplicity in the purchase of musical instruments has become
proverbial. But history is not taken down in shorthand as it
occurs, and it sometimes lags a little. The modern American small
boy is a vastly different being from either of these
transatlantic worthies; at all events his most prominent
characteristics, as they strike a stranger, are not illustrated
in the earlier period of their career.

The peculiarities of young America would, indeed, matter but
little to the stranger if young America stayed at home. But young
America does not stay at home. It is not necessary to track the
American small boy to his native haunts in order to see what he
is like. He is very much in evidence even on this side the
Atlantic. At certain seasons he circulates in Europe with the
facility of the British sovereign; for the American nation
cherishes t