of murder, he turned away with a disappointed _expression, but evidently with a fixed determination to discover a genuine criminal somewhere else.
Not only children, but also their elders, constantly mistake the policeman, the programme-seller, and the sleeping attendant for living people; but few children are so simple as the little maiden who, glancing awe-struck down the long array of very lifelike effigies of good, bad, and indifferent individuals, asked her mother in a whisper how they were killed before being stuffed.
One day a lady was explaining the different groups to her young nephew. Pointing to one, she said, "Freddy, this is the Transvaal crisis. Here are President Kruger, Mr. Cecil Rhodes, and Dr. Jameson; all those people are alive."
Indicating the next group, she said, "This is the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots; all these people are dead."
"I do not see any difference between the live ones and the dead ones," replied the young hopeful to his auntie, assuming a puzzled _expression.
There is no accounting for the actions of children. Several youngsters, for instance, have been observed slyly pinching the figures to see if any were alive.
The story is also told of a small girl who, when asked what she had done with her sweets, replied that she had given them to the baby in the cradle—Prince Edward of Wales.
A child was lost, and found concealed behind the figure of the Sleeping Beauty, trying to discover the mechanism that makes Madame St. Amaranthe's bosom rise and fall.
Of children's stories there is no end at Madame Tussaud's.
Sir Ernest Shackleton once told some amusing stories at a dinner of the Alpine Ski Club.
He said his own small boy was terribly bored with expedition talk. He told his mother that he wanted to hear of something really exciting. "I don't want to know anything more about papa," he declared; "tell me about the baby who was drowned in his bath." Was the boy thinking of Marat, the evil genius of the French Revolution, whom Charlotte Corday stabbed at his ablutions?
Sir Ernest said that his wife and son had recently been to see his model at Madame Tussaud's, but the child took more interest in General Tom Thumb sitting on the palm of the Russian giant's hand than he did in the portrait of his father.
"Two ladies," the explorer said, "were standing by my figure, and the younger one observed, `That's Latham, the airman.'
" `No,' replied the other, `that is not Latham; it is the man, you know, who went to the North Pole.'
"It is experiences such as these that keep a man modest," said Sir Ernest. The ladies had forgotten his name and the object of his expedition, which was in the Antarctic and not the Arctic region—a distinction of minor importance to the general public perhaps.
In the days of the Boer War the children of an illustrious couple who were touring the world fell, childlike, to discussing the presents their parents would bring home for them.
"I know what I want," said the youngest of them. "I want old Kruger's hat and whiskers, and I believe papa will bring them to me, because I want to send them to Madame Tussaud's."
Mr. Cyril Maude, the actor, was taken to the Exhibition when a small boy, and it is recorded of him that the visit inspired him with the determination to become an actor. If that were so, then we may congratulate ourselves.
Some years ago a lady wrote to say that when scolding her child for being naughty, and impressing upon her that bad little girls would not go to heaven, the child naïvely replied, "Well, mother, I can't expect to go everywhere, but I've been to Madame Tussaud's.