Literary Lapses

"You are eight years old?" asked the bard. "I suppose so," answered she. "I have been eight years old for years and years." "And you know nothing of death, of course?" said the poet cheerfully. "How can I?" answered the child. "Now then," resumed the venerable William, "let us get to business. Name your brothers and sisters." "Let me see," began the child wearily; "there was Rube and Ike, two I can't think of, and John and Jane." "You must not count John and Jane," interrupted the bard reprovingly; "they're dead, you know, so that doesn't make seven." "I wasn't counting them, but perhaps I added up wrongly," said the child; "and will you please move your overshoe off my neck?" "Pardon," said the old man. "A nervous trick, I have been absorbed; indeed, the exigency of the metre almost demands my doubling up my feet. To continue, however; which died first?" "The first to go was little Jane," said the child. "She lay moaning in bed, I presume?" "In bed she moaning lay." "What killed her?" "Insomnia," answered the girl. "The gaiety of our cottage life, previous to the departure of our elder brothers for Conway, and the constant field-sports in which she indulged with John, proved too much for a frame never too robust." "You express yourself well," said the poet. "Now, in regard to your unfortunate brother, what was the effect upon him in the following winter of the ground being white with snow and your being able to run and slide?"