GO TO FATHER
Reading edition
A schoolboy one day picked up a piece of poetry at school and carried it home and gave it to his grandmother to read. When she had read it she said:
“Kit, you ought never repeat that, because that is just the same as telling people to go to the bad place.” The poetry was as follows:
“When I asked my girl to marry me, she said, ‘Go to father.’ She knew that I knew her father was dead; She knew that I knew what a life he had led; She knew that I knew what she meant when she said, ‘Go to father.’”
The chaplain of a large private asylum asked a brother clergyman to preach to the inmates on a Sunday during his absence. Before going away, he said: “Preach your best, for, though insane on some points, they are very intelligent.” So he talked to them of India, and of heathen mothers who threw their dear little babies into the sacred river Ganges as offerings to their false gods. Tears streamed down the face of one listener, evidently deeply affected. When asked by the preacher afterward what part of the sermon had touched his heart with grief, the lunatic replied: “I was thinking it was a pity your mother didn’t throw you into the Ganges.”