Wit Inspirations Of The "Two-Year-Olds"
All infants appear to have an impertinent and disagreeable fashion nowadays of saying
"smart" things on most occasions that offer, and especially on occasions when they ought
not to be saying anything at all. Judging by the average published specimens of smart
sayings, the rising generation of children are little better than idiots. And the parents must
surely be but little better than the children, for in most cases they are the publishers of the
sunbursts of infantile imbecility which dazzle us from the pages of our periodicals. I may
seem to speak with some heat, not to say a suspicion of personal spite; and I do admit that
it nettles me to hear about so many gifted infants in these days, and remember that I
seldom said anything smart when I was a child. I tried it once or twice, but it was not
popular. The family were not expecting brilliant remarks from me, and so they snubbed
me sometimes and spanked me the rest. But it makes my flesh creep and my blood run
cold to think what might have happened to me if I had dared to utter some of the smart
things of this generation's "four-year-olds" where my father could hear me. To have
simply skinned me alive and considered his duty at an end would have seemed to him
criminal leniency toward one so sinning. He was a stern, unsmiling man, and hated all
forms of precocity. If I had said some of the things I have referred to, and said them in his
hearing, he would have destroyed me. He would, indeed. He would, provided the
opportunity remained with him. But it would not, for I would have had judgment enough
to take some strychnine first and say my smart thing afterward. The fair record of my life
has been tarnished by just one pun. My father overheard that, and he hunted me over four
or five townships seeking to take my life. If I had been full-grown, of course he would
have been right; but, child as I was, I could not know how wicked a thing I had done.
I made one of those remarks ordinarily called "smart things" before that, but it was not a
pun. Still, it came near causing a serious rupture between my father and myself. My
father and mother, my uncle Ephraim and his wife, and one or two others were present,
and the conversation turned on a name for me. I was lying there trying some India-rubber
rings of various patterns, and endeavoring to make a selection, for I was tired of trying to
cut my teeth on people's fingers, and wanted to get hold of something that would enable
me to hurry the thing through and get something else. Did you ever notice what a
nuisance it was cutting your teeth on your nurse's finger, or how back-breaking and
tiresome it was trying to cut them on your big toe? And did you never get out of patience
and wish your teeth were in Jerico long before you got them half cut? To me it seems as
if these things happened yesterday. And they did, to some children. But I digress. I was
lying there trying the India-rubber rings. I remember looking at the clock and noticing
that in an hour and twenty-five minutes I would be two weeks old, and thinking how little
I had done to merit the blessings that were so unsparingly lavished upon me. My father
said:
"Abraham is a good name. My grandfather was named Abraham."
