Page:The Chinese Boy and Girl.djvu/33

Rh We have in English a rhyme:

I had tried many months to find if there were any finger, face or body games other than those already given. Our own nurse insisted that she knew of none, but one day I noticed her grabbing my little girl's knee, while she was saying:

There is no literature in China, not even in the sacred books, which is so generally known as their nursery rhymes. These are understood and repeated by the educated and the illiterate alike; by the children of princes and the children of beggars; children in the city and children in the country and villages, and they produce like results in the minds and hearts of all. The little folks laugh over the Cow, look sober over the Little Orphan, absorb the morals taught by the Mouse, and are sung to sleep by the song of the Little Snail.

Sometimes however they, like children in other lands, are skepticalsceptical [sic] as to the reality of the stories told in the songs. Thus I remember once hearing our old nurse telling a number of stories and singing a number of songs to the little