School-Room Humour

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Title: School-Room Humour

Author: Dr. MacNamara

Release Date: August 27, 2012 [EBook #40593]

Language: English

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SCHOOL-ROOM HUMOUR.

Dr. Macnamara desires to thank the Directors of the Schoolmaster for the right to use most of the stories which follow. He desires also to thank his old friends, the teachers up and down the country, whose anecdotes he is presuming to put into print.

All rights reserved

School-Room

Humour

BY

Dr. MACNAMARA, M.P.

THIRD EDITION

"Faith is what makes you believe what you know to be untrue"

Truthful James, aged 10

BRISTOL

J. W. Arrowsmith Ltd., Quay Street

LONDON

Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company Limited

1913

First Published 1905

Second Edition (enlarged) 1907

Third Edition (with picture cover) 1913

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

The original Edition of School-Room Humour published two years ago gave so much pleasure to so many people that it has occurred to me that a new and enlarged edition may prove not entirely unacceptable. I have therefore added the best from my collection since the first publication; and now, as then, tender my thanks to the proprietors of the Schoolmaster and to my friends the elementary school teachers.

T. J. Macnamara.

January, 1907.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

School-Room Humour having proved a constant source of enjoyment to an ever-widening public, the Publishers have pleasure in issuing a third edition, revised, and with a picture cover, and trust that in its new dress the little book will continue to provide amusement for a large circle of readers.

September, 1913.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. Page

A LITTLE GENERAL DISQUISITION 9

CHAPTER II.

CHILDREN'S WITTICISMS CRITICALLY CONSIDERED 14

CHAPTER III.

A BUDGET OF QUAINT DEFINITIONS 28

CHAPTER IV.

I NOW TAKE MY PEN IN HAND 38

CHAPTER V.

THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY 72

CHAPTER VI.

THE FOND PARENT 89

CHAPTER VII.

LITTLE SCIENTISTS AT SEA 97

CHAPTER VIII.

A MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTION 105

School-Room Humour.

CHAPTER I.

A LITTLE GENERAL DISQUISITION.

TEACHER: "What does B.C. stand for?"

SCHOLAR: "Before Christ!"

TEACHER: "Good! Now what does B.A. stand for?"

SCHOLAR: "Before Adam!"

It is not to be denied that the life of the schoolmaster is always exacting, usually tedious, and occasionally irritating. It is not to be denied that long-enduring patience, untiring perseverance, and philosophical resignation are only the first three of the many qualities essential to success. But still the drudgery of teaching has its compensations. And they are the more acceptable because of their rare charm. There, in the schoolmaster's keeping, is the youthful mind. What may he not do with it? What forgetfulness of the dreary round of toil the very contemplation of the situation compels! And when his task is achieved, and the finished product of his labour has passed out into the world, with what quiet and ineffable satisfaction the schoolmaster reflects upon the part he played in the making of men. In the days of my schoolmastering I fell into this mood always—gently carried thence by some beneficent ministering angel—when wearied and worried at the close of the long day's toil; and in that mood was more balm than in many sedatives and more sereneness than in much repose. This is the schoolmaster's first great compensation.

But there is that other. There is the agreeable amazement that the working of the fresh child-mind is always provoking. And in this the schoolmaster is regularly furnished with food for pleasant reflection and for engaging conjecture day by day throughout the whole of his pedagogic career. Child-study and Psychology have in recent times taken severely scientific shape, and have fallen under the ægis of Government Departments and into Government Syllabuses. Good! But the least observant and the least interested of all the schoolmasters of the land, long before the Board of Education ever added Child-study to its quaint if not exactly terrifying terminology, have never failed to arrive empirically at certain broad conclusions with regard to the child-mind which have been reached by practical and altogether delightful daily experiences. Heaven forbid that I should unduly weary the reader with disquisitions on these conclusions. But, at any rate, I may acceptably rehearse some of the experiences.

Now I admit at once that very many of the artlessly amusing things which are alleged to have been uttered by that prime unconscious humorist, the schoolboy, are quite apocryphal. They have been ingeniously excogitated by their unabashed and artful elders for the purpose of creating a laugh. They used to say that quill pens survived in the office of the Board of Education in order that the Inspectors and other officials, in the operation of persistently trimming them, might never be without something to do. That is absurd. There is always the profitable preoccupation of manufacturing funny puerile answers to inspectorial hypothetical questions. Why not? The proceeding is innocent enough. But it does tend to make one incredulous. For example, I was once told that a London Board School child defined "a lie as an abomination in the sight of the Lord, but a very present help in time of trouble. It is possible, remotely possible. But it is extremely unlikely. Then when I am told that a youngster described the liver as an infernal organ, I see visions of a not fully-occupied civil servant suffering acutely from an attack of chronic indigestion which has put him badly off his drive. So, too, when I am told that a Bristol youngster once wrote, The bowels are five in number, namely a, e, i, o and u, like the Scotsman, I hae ma doots! Then there is the classic answer to the question: What proof have we from the Bible that it is not lawful to have more than one wife—Because it says no man can serve two masters!" No child ever said that. And belonging to the same category is the following. The teacher asked: If one man walking at the rate of three miles an hour gets half an hour's start of another man walking at the rate of four miles an hour, when will the second man overtake the first? The allegation is that the small boy replied: "Please, sir, at the first public-house!" But I know that small boy. He is a wag, it is true; but he doesn't wear knickerbockers.

So far as possible, therefore, I will endeavour to reject the apocryphal in favour of the authentic, giving the former the benefit of the doubt, of course, if on its merits the humour of the anecdote seems to condone the illegitimacy of its origin.

CHAPTER II.

CHILDREN'S WITTICISMS CRITICALLY CONSIDERED.

"A focus is a thing that looks like a mushroom, but if you eat it you will feel different to a mushroom."—SMALL GIRL.

Of course children's witticisms are always unconscious. They have taken the idiomatic quite literally: not quite caught our meaning; missed the right word in favour of another that is curiously like it in sound.

Reasonably enough the idiom is extremely troublesome to the child-mind. The doctor says my mother has one foot in the grave, wrote a little girl the other day in a Composition Exercise. "That is not true. She has both feet in bed!" Again, if people will talk about going it bald-headed, or about being stony-hearted or iron-fisted or brazen-faced, and so on, they must naturally expect young children to accept the phraseology in its literal sense. Hence amusing misconceptions.

Again, as I say, it is often a question of not having quite got the right word. Having mumbled The Lord's Prayer every day for a year or so, we ultimately get the young Cockney who is found to be rendering "Lead us