What Our Own Minneapolis Kiddies Say

Like every other small boy, Kent resents the time lost in personal scrubbing. When he finally makes up his mind to get up in the morning he doesn't want to waste a lot of time getting ready to go out and play, and the regular process of having his face washed and then his ears touched up a little is a nuisance. The other morning there was a playmate calling him while the ablution process was going on. "Mother, ain't I done yet?" he inquired, restlessly wriggling under the face cloth. "Your face is fairly clean, dear," was the reply, "but I haven't washed your ears." "O, mother," he exclaimed with a weary and long-suffering sigh, "I wisht God had made me just plain on the sides!" His Own Interpretation. She had been a Sunday school teacher long enough to interpret most of the remarks that the youngsters made, but this time she had a pretty stiff time of it. "My father is a werry bad man," observed the small boy. "God made him lame because he was bad." This was a poser, for the kiddie's father – lame since boyhood – was known as a particularly upright sort of a character. She demurred, shocked. "But God did," persisted the son with some pardonable pride. "My mama said my papa got lame from spyin' men on Jesus." And then she happened to remember that the cause of the father's troubles was spinal meningitis. Circumstantial Evidence. This small boy, with a most devout mind, lives on the avenue in St. Paul from which all religion has been recently excluded as far as possible and, since the decree has gone forth that there may be no churches in the neighborhood, the small boy has his Sunday school lesson at home out of the big Bible with colored pictures. "What are those things around these people's heads?" he inquired with interest. "Those are haloes," explained the fond mother. "Why do they have to wear them?" was the net poser. Mother was somewhat nonplussed, but replied with an inspiration: "That shows that they are God's children. Only God's children can wear haloes." He gazed the rings with great interest, and said nothing more. The next day, as he speeded his wheel up and down the sidewalk in front of the house he chanced to see a metal barrel hoop lying out in the street. Seizing it with great excitement he rushed in to his mother. "Say, mother," he shouted, "those children of God's must live around here somewhere – one of 'em's lost his hat out here." He Got the Idea – and Passed It On. Grandma had been reading to her grandson of tender years a story book of the old-fashioned variety about good little Willie who always kept his hands clean and went to heaven when he died, and bad little Susie, who teased her little baby brother and writhed in fiery torment in after life. He listened carefully and respectfully until time to go to bed. Up in the nursery his mother overheard him relating some of the most highly colored tales to his small sister. "You should hear them," he said, very, very solemnly, "they are warnings to little children."

Children from the Alfveby and Bradshaw families played outside a tent on Pig's Eye Island in the Mississippi River south of downtown St. Paul in about 1910. (Image courtesy mnhs.org)