o 
 o 
 
 ^1 <."> 
 
 * * « > 
 
 Book .X-S-i . 
 
 Title 
 
 Imprint. 
 
 19 l<? 
 
THREE OF THEM 
 
 ABOUT NAUGHTINESS AND FROGS AND 
 HISTORICAL PICTURES 
 
 y BY 
 
 A^ CONAN DOYLE 
 
 Author of 
 
 "The Valley of Fear," "The Lost World, 
 
 "His Last Bow," 
 
 etc. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
Copyright, 1919, 
 By A. Conan DoyU 
 
 ©CLA5113S7 
 Privted in the United States of America 
 
 JAN 24 1919 
 
r^ 
 c- 
 
 f%'' 
 
 ,^A 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ABOUT NAUGHTINESS AND 
 
 FROGS AND HISTORICAL 
 
 PICTURES 
 
 THERE are all sorts of types and moods of 
 childish naughtiness, as every harassed 
 parent knows. With these three particular little 
 people the difference was quite marked. Laddie 
 was rarely naughty, but if he was it was in a de- 
 spairing, can't-help-it, very-sorry-but-you-will- 
 have-to-put-up-with-it way which it was difficult 
 to deal with. Dimples, on the contrary, was cold- 
 blooded and deliberate, with a determined "I- 
 will-now-do-some-mischufF" air, which invited 
 spanking. Baby was seldom obstreperous, but it 
 took her, when it did come, in an "I-don't-care- 
 a-blow-for-anybody- and-I'm- going- to- kick my 
 slipper-up-the-ceiling" delirium of wickedness 
 which it was impossible to control, so that a dis- 
 
 [3] 
 
ABOUT NAUGHTINESS AND FROGS 
 
 tressed Lady and a secretly chuckling Daddy 
 could only wait till the weather cleared. 
 
 This is preliminary to the fact that Dimples 
 had been exceedingly naughty in his own char- 
 acteristic fashion upon the day under discussion. 
 The truth was that he had been disappointed, and 
 when that happened he usually ended by taking 
 it out of some one. The disappointment was that 
 in a too expansive moment Daddy had given him 
 to understand that some day the tribe would 
 gather in the dead of night and would burn down 
 the chauffeur's cottage, with a rain of arrows di- 
 rected all the while upon the windows and door. 
 Dimples had prepared the bundles of straw, and 
 now it had to be explained to him that Daddy 
 had got a little beyond what was practical, and 
 that the law had a fussy and unreasonable objec- 
 tion to games of that kind. 
 
 Then there was something else which had 
 shaken his nerves up on the day before. It was 
 a tragedy in three scenes. The first scene was 
 that Dimples discovered a wasps' nest and stirred 
 it up. The next was that a wasps' nest dis- 
 covered Dimples and stirred him up. The third — 
 well, the result of it was heard all over a quiet 
 [4] 
 
AND HISTORICAL PICTURES 
 
 country parish, for Dimples has the largest howl 
 to the square inch that has ever been heard. So 
 perhaps after such an experience there was some 
 little excuse for his being contrary after all. 
 
 But it took the queerest shape — like many of 
 his vagaries — for his ways were original. It be- 
 gan by sticking remarks of his own into his 
 prayers, which were by no means of a humble or 
 prayerful character. Thus he said, addressing 
 his Maker, "Please make me a good boy— which 
 I am!" At the dictation of his mother he said, 
 "Please teach me self-control to others," and 
 added, "please also teach others self-control to 
 me." Finally he showed how much he needed 
 this self-control by completely losing his temper, 
 and charging in tears and furj^ with clenched 
 teeth and raging fists, at Laddie, who looked with 
 gentle contempt at tlie furious figure, and re- 
 marked icily, "Do blow your nose!" which 
 brought the charge to an ignominious halt. That 
 was a touch of Laddie's knightly spirit, as cool, 
 proud, and reserved before menace as he was 
 soft and yielding to love. 
 
 So the rascal was punished and dismissed to 
 the garden, where he was to remain until he felt 
 
 [5] 
 
ABOUT NAUGHTINESS AND FROGS 
 
 chastened. Presently, however, his parents re- 
 lented in the weak way they had, and strolled 
 out into the garden to see the flowers, or the 
 weather, or how the potatoes were coming on, or 
 any excuse upon earth which would hide from 
 each other their true purpose, which was to see 
 how the exile was enduring his sufferings — each, 
 of course, being perfectly aware all the time of 
 the other's duplicity. There was no sign of the 
 sinner, but presently, as they approached the 
 little bush-girt pond, they heard a high, trem- 
 ulous, childish voice. These were the words they 
 heard : — 
 
 "Once on a Cannibal Island dwelt 
 A — dark — eyed — maid ' ' 
 
 Daddy signalled caution, and the two grown- 
 ups, as if they were playing Indian games them- 
 selves, crept up to the bushes and looked over. It 
 was a scene which each will remember. The child 
 stood facing the pond, swinging his hand and 
 nodding his head as he chanted : — 
 
 "She turned very red and she snorted and said, 
 'I wouldn't leave my little hut for you-oo-oo! 
 I've got one lover, and I don't want two-oo-oo.' " 
 [6] 
 
AND HISTORICAL PICTURES 
 
 His eyes as he sang this weird ballad, which he 
 had learned from his nurse, were so fixed and set, 
 that it was easy to discover his audience. Six 
 large frogs ^yere sitting head-on, with their gog- 
 gle eyes turned upwards, on the grass margin of 
 the pond. They looked absurdly like six rather 
 overfed critics in the front row of the stalls. 
 
 "Halloa!" said Daddy, coming round the cor- 
 ner, and there were six flops in the water. The 
 critics were gone. 
 
 "Halloa!" said Dimples, cheerily. He never 
 bore a grudge, even when he had to be whipped. 
 
 "Singing to the frogs?" 
 
 ''And two water beetles," said Dimples, who 
 had a curious control over animals. "There was 
 a newt, but he wouldn't stay." 
 
 "Do you think they liked it, dear?" asked the 
 Lady, putting her arms round her prodigal. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I know they liked it. They puff their 
 throats in and out when they like things. I sang 
 it right through twice." 
 
 Baby and Laddie had appeared upon the scene. 
 Baby was swollen with pride because she had 
 been taken the day before to London to see what 
 she called "an octopus" about her eyes. All day 
 
 [7] 
 
ABOUT NAUGHTINESS AND FROGS 
 
 she sat about in corners with a piece of glass, pre- 
 tending to be "an octopus," and acting, as the 
 true artist does, not to impress others, but for 
 her own amusement in the demure, self-contained 
 way which is characteristic. "Wriggly," her an- 
 cient eider-down quilt fetish, was her absurd pa- 
 tient, and now, up-ended in all sorts of grotesque 
 angles, it was having its eyes examined. She 
 had insisted upon taking it with her to London, 
 but as it was a most disreputable rag she had to 
 compromise that it go in a cardboard box. "Yes, 
 dear, / enjoyed the journey, but Wriggly was so 
 stuffy in the box !" With the extraordinary im- 
 agination of young childhood she has rigged up 
 quite a family tree of relations for this tattered 
 quilt, mere names most of them, but very vivid 
 all the same. Some days before the Lady had 
 been somewhat taken aback to learn that Baby 
 had been married the day before. "Yes, dear, I 
 have married Wriggly's brother," she explained, 
 and went about for some days with an air of great 
 importance in honour of her invisible bridegroom. 
 Allusion has been made in previous papers to 
 the traces of racial stages which can be observed 
 in the development of normal children : the animal 
 [8] 
 
AND HISTORICAL PICTURES 
 
 stage, the savage stage, the hunter, the scout, even 
 the fetish worshipper. But there is one stage 
 which may well puzzle the student, and that is the 
 make-pretence stage. It is well marked, comes 
 suddenly, goes suddenly, and is very strong while 
 it lasts. During this time the child continually 
 pretends to be this or that, taking the pretence 
 very seriously, carrying out the part very thor- 
 oughly, and showing wonderful ingenuity not 
 only in its own playing of the role, but in the way 
 in which at a moment's notice it will play up to 
 the role of a companion, and find the right word. 
 "I am the dog Crusoe," says Dimples. "Down, 
 puppy, down!" says Laddie. In a moment each 
 catches the spirit of the other. And their answers 
 to objections come quick and sharp. "I am a 
 thirty-foot rock snake," Laddie announced one 
 day, and gravely acted the part till evening. 
 "How in the world will you fit into your bed?" 
 asked Daddy. "Oh, coil up, coil up!" said he. 
 
 Now and then the absurdity of it overcomes 
 them and you hear that pleasantest of sounds, the 
 sincere laughter of a child. But as a rule they 
 are as grave as judges — if you can still use such 
 a simile. 
 
 [9] 
 
ABOUT NAUGHTINESS AND FROGS 
 
 On one occasion early in the war Laddie, who 
 was then a very small boy, was seen standing 
 about with a gloomy and malevolent air of maj- 
 esty. "Who are you to-day, dear?" asked his 
 mother. "I am the German Emperor." "Oh, 
 dear," said the Lady, "I don't think Daddy will 
 like that at all!" "Daddy! A mere common 
 Enghshman!" said the Emperor. That was one 
 of Laddie's naughty days and he was getting 
 level in this fashion. With their nimble little wits 
 they often, consciously or not, score off their 
 elders. "What are you going to be when you 
 grow up?" a sympathetic visitor asked Dimples. 
 "Oh, I'll just do nothing, the same as Daddy," 
 was the answer. 
 
 If you want to study the strange, quick work- 
 ings of the child-mind, get a book with interesting 
 pictures which excite the imagination, and then 
 ask the young students what they are. Daddy 
 has an illustrated history of the ancient world 
 which is a perpetual joy to both master and to 
 pupils. It begins with Babylonian affairs, and 
 then Assyrian, Egyptian, Grecian, and so on in 
 the order of the great empires. The Three will 
 sit in an absorbed circle upon the hearthrug look- 
 [10] 
 
AND HISTORICAL PICTURES 
 
 ing at the wall-carvings of their ancestors and 
 speculating as to their meaning, while Daddy, 
 overlooking them from his arm-chair, pretends to 
 know a good deal more than he does. 
 
 "What's this ?" he asks. The "this" happens to 
 be a section of a neolithic grave, with skeleton and 
 funeral pots in a circle all around it. 
 
 The children gaze at it earnestly. 
 
 "It's the inside of a Jumbo with a man he has 
 eaten," says Dimples, with decision. 
 
 "Jumbos don't eat men," says Laddie. "Jum- 
 bos eat buns." 
 
 "Pots," says Baby. She speaks seldom, but 
 always with decision, and is usually right. 
 
 "Yes, dear, pots. The man is dead and buried, 
 and these are for his use in the next world. That 
 was their idea in those days. Now, then, what 
 is this?" 
 
 "Uncle Remus sucking a wolf." 
 
 "Romulus and Remus. They were the two 
 children who grew up and built Rome. They 
 were nursed by a wolf." 
 
 "I wonder if they knew Mowgli?" said Lad- 
 die. "He had a wolf for a mummy, too." 
 
 "I'm jolly glad we've got a proper mummy," 
 
 [u] 
 
ABOUT NAUGHTINESS AND FROGS 
 
 said Dimples. "Fancy saying your prayers at 
 night to a wolf! Wouldn't it be beastly?" 
 
 "But they grew up very strong," said Daddy, 
 "and they made such a wonderful city that in time 
 it conquered the whole world." 
 
 "But not England," said Laddie, stoutly. 
 
 "Yes, England too." 
 
 "Oo!" cried the children. 
 
 "But not fairly," said Laddie. 
 
 "Well, it was a good thing for England," said 
 Daddy. "We were just painted savages and 
 they taught us some sense. Now, boys, what is 
 this?" 
 
 It is surprising what a lot of information the 
 eager little brains can pick up, if you make the 
 thing a game instead of a task. They had seen 
 some of these pictures before, and now they were 
 off full cry, each capping the other. 
 
 "That's where the Greeks play games." 
 
 "Chariots run round that place." 
 
 "That's a temple where God lived." 
 
 "That's Babylon, and they had big stone 
 shelves and gardens on them, and the houses were 
 made of mud, and they are just heaps of dirt now, 
 with dogs running about." 
 [12] 
 
AND HISTORICAL PICTURES 
 
 "That's the king's palace. That's him killing 
 lions on the wall." 
 
 "Now," said Daddy, "what's thatr 
 
 It was certainly a puzzle. An Egyptian over- 
 seer in a wall-painting was standing with his tab- 
 lets telling off the work for a line of negro slaves. 
 The arms were all held at strange angles. 
 
 "It's one man boxing against six," said Lad- 
 die. 
 
 "It's a woman with six men that want to marry 
 her," was Dimples' decision. Baby could only 
 shake her little curly head. 
 
 "Soldiers," said she. 
 
 So they guessed and prattled as they turned 
 over those fascinating leaves, now arguing about 
 the cave-painting of a prehistoric savage, now the 
 picture-writing of an Indian, now some strange 
 dado taken from a Yucatan temple buried in 
 primeval forest. Daddy leaned back and smoked 
 and watched and listened in the gathering gloom 
 of evening, while the firelight came and went on 
 the eager features of the children. They were 
 the very last buds at the end of the newest 
 branches of the great tree of life. And here in 
 this book they were gazing at the work of those 
 
 [13] 
 
ABOUT NAUGHTINESS AND FROGS 
 
 old, old flowers upon branches which had with- 
 ered SO long ago. They too would work and 
 they would pass, and there would come yet others, 
 as far from us as we from Babylon, who would 
 stare and guess and laugh when they saw the pic- 
 tures of our little ships and aeroplanes and rude 
 appliances for outwitting Nature. It was all 
 working and working — and to what end? The 
 life-urge was terrific and relentless and it pushed 
 them always on. Monkey men crouching in a 
 cave at one end — pure spirit, perhaps, at the 
 other. There was more in Daddy's mind than 
 he could tell the children as he looked at the three 
 heads clustered over the old book before the fire. 
 
 [14]