The _enfant terrible_ plays an important rôle in literature as in society during these modern days, and although a little of him goes a good way, yet it must be owned that his sayings are sometimes spicy.
A grandfather was holding Master Tom, a youth of five, on his knees, when the youngster suddenly asked him why his hair was white. "Oh," says grandpapa, "that's because I'm so old. Why, don't you know that I was in the ark?"
"In the ark?" cries Tommy: "why you aren't Noah, are you, grandpapa?"
"No, you haven't guessed right: I'm not Japhet."
"Well, then, grandpapa," said the child, driven to the extremity of his biblical knowledge, "you must be one of the beasts."
Not less critical was the comment of a lad who was taken to church one Sunday for the first time.
"You see, Augustus," said his fond mamma, anxious to impress his tender mind at such a moment with lasting remembrances, "how many people come here to pray to God?"
"Yes, but not so many as go to the circus," says the practical lad.
Quite natural, also, was the reply of a little lady who was found crying by her mother because one of her companions had given her a slap.
"Well, I hope you paid her back?" cried the angry mother, her indignation getting the better of her judgment.
Another little girl, after attending the funeral of one of her schoolmates, which ceremony had been conducted at the school, was giving an animated account of the exercises on her return home.
"And I suppose you were all sobbing as if your hearts would break, poor things!" says papa.
"Oh no," replies the child: "only the front row cried."
It was one of the features of the shah-mania that British journalism was overrun and surfeited with Persian topics, Persian allusions and fragments of the Persian language and literature. Every pedant of the press displayed an unexpected and astonishing acquaintance with Persian history, Persian geography, Persian manners and customs. Desperate cramming was done to get up Persian quotations for leading articles, or at least a saying or two from Hafiz or Saadi of the sort commonly found at the end of a lexicon or in some popular book of maxims. Ludicrous disputes arose between morning papers as to the comparative profundity of each other's researches into Persian lore; but the climax was capped, we think, by one London journal, which politely offered advice to Nasr-ed-Dîn about his conduct and his reading. "Should Nasr-ed-Dîn be impressed by English flattery," said this editor gravely, "with an exaggerated sense of his own importance, His Majesty, as a corrective, may recall to mind the Persian fable of 'Ushter wa Dirâz-kush,' from the 'Baharistân' of Jaumy." In ordinary times an explanation might be vouchsafed of what the said fable is, but none was given in the present instance, it being taken for granted, during the shah's visit, that the Baharistân of Jaumy was as familiar to the average Englishman as Mother Goose. Upon the whole, our country has not been wholly unfortunate in not seeing the shah. Horace's famous "Persicos odi, puer, apparatus," has a very close application in the "Persian stuff" with which British journalism has lately been flooded.