not going to the right tune
and rhythm; for there is a genuine folk-tune which I thought
indissolubly wedded to this derisive formula. Beginning in a long drawl,
it throws all the weight on the first and fourth syllables: "_Old_
Father _Smith_-er." But these children, apparently ignorant of it, had
invented a rhythm of their own, in which the first syllable, "Old," was
almost elided, and the weight was thrown on the next. I could not help
wondering at the breach which this indicated with the ancient folk
traditions.

If it were necessary, plentiful other evidence could be produced of the
children's great need for more subjects upon which to exercise their
thoughts and fancies. For one example: some years ago a little
maidservant from this village was found, when she went to her first
"place" in the town, never to have seen a lamb, or a pond of water. This
was an extreme case, perhaps; but it suggests how badly the children are
handicapped. As recently as last year, when a circus was visiting the
town, I asked two village boys on the road if they had seen the
procession. They had not; nor had they ever in their lives seen a camel
or an elephant; but one of them "thought he should know an elephant, by
his trunk." He was probably eight years old; and it is worth noting that
he must have owed his enlightenment to books or pictures seen at school;
indeed, there is nothing of the sort to be learnt at home, where there
are no books, and where the parents, themselves limited to so narrow a
range of experience and therefore of ideas, are not apt to encourage
inquisitiveness in their children. A man who lived near me a few years
ago could often be heard, on Sundays and on summer evenings, chiding
his little son for that fault. "Don't you keep on astin' so many
questions," was his formula, which I must have heard dozens of times.
One can sympathize: it would be so much easier to give the child a bun,
or the cottage equivalent, and order him to eat it; but that does not
satisfy the child's appetite for information. Probably the great
difficulty is that the children's questions can hardly any longer turn
upon those old-fashioned subjects which the parents understand, but upon
new-fangled things. And, apart from all this, I suspect that in most of
the cottages the old notion prevails that children should be kept in
their place, and not encouraged to bother grown-up people with their
trumpery affairs.

From the contrast between th