Little boy.  “And then they steamed bang into the monitor.”

Little girl.  “Brother, don’t you sink my monitor!”

Little boy (without heeding, and hurrying toward the climax).  “And the torpedo went at the monitor!”

Little girl.  “My monitor is not to sink!”

Little boy, dramatically:  “And bang the monitor sank!”

Little girl.  “It didn’t do any such thing.  My monitor always goes to bed at seven, and it’s now quarter past.  My monitor was in bed and couldn’t sink!”

When I was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Leonard Wood and I used often to combine forces and take both families of children out to walk, and occasionally some of their playmates.  Leonard Wood’s son, I found, attributed the paternity of all of those not of his own family to me.  Once we were taking the children across Rock Creek on a fallen tree.  I was standing on the middle of the log trying to prevent any of the children from falling off, and while making a clutch at one peculiarly active and heedless child I fell off myself.  As I emerged from the water I heard the little Wood boy calling frantically to the General:  “Oh! oh!  The father of all the children fell into the creek!”—­which made me feel like an uncommonly moist patriarch.  Of course the children took much interest in the trophies I occasionally brought back from my hunts.  When I started for my regiment, in ’98, the stress of leaving home, which was naturally not pleasant, was somewhat lightened by the next to the youngest boy, whose ideas of what was about to happen were hazy, clasping me round the legs with a beaming smile and saying, “And is my father going to the war?  And will he bring me back a bear?” When, some five months later, I returned, of course in my uniform, this little boy was much puzzled as to my identity, although he greeted me affably with “Good afternoon, Colonel.”  Half an hour later somebody asked him, “Where’s father?” to which he responded, “I don’t know; but the Colonel is taking a bath.”

Of course the children anthropomorphized—­if that is the proper term—­their friends of the animal world.  Among these friends at one period was the baker’s horse, and on a very rainy day I heard the little girl, who was looking out of the window, say, with a melancholy shake of her head, “Oh! there’s poor Kraft’s horse, all soppin’ wet!”

While I was in the White House the youngest boy became an habitue of a small and rather noisome animal shop, and the good-natured owner would occasionally let him take pets home to play with.  On one occasion I was holding a conversation with one of the leaders in Congress, Uncle Pete Hepburn, about the Railroad Rate Bill.  The children were strictly trained not to interrupt business, but on this particular occasion the little boy’s feelings overcame him.  He had been loaned a king-snake, which, as all nature-lovers know, is not only a useful but a beautiful snake, very friendly to human beings; and he came rushing home to show the treasure.  He was holding it inside his coat, and it contrived to wiggle partly down the sleeve.  Uncle Pete Hepburn naturally did not understand the full import of what the little boy was saying to me as he endeavored to wriggle out of his jacket, and kindly started to help him—­and then jumped back with alacrity as the small boy and the snake both popped out of the jacket.