If you be a gentleman,
As I suppose you be,
You'll neither laugh nor smile
With a tickling of your knee.

I had tried many months to find if there were any finger,
face or body games other than those already given. Our own nurse
insisted that she knew of none, but one day I noticed her
grabbing my little girl's knee, while she was saying:

One grab silver,
Two grabs gold,
Three don't laugh,
And you'll grow old.

There is no literature in China, not even in the sacred
books, which is so generally known as their nursery
rhymes. These are understood and repeated by the educated
and the illiterate alike; by the children of princes and
the children of beggars; children in the city and children in
the country and villages, and they produce like results in
the minds and hearts of all. The little folks laugh over the
Cow, look sober over the Little Orphan, absorb the morals
taught by the Mouse, and are sung to sleep by the song of
the Little Snail.

Sometimes however they, like children in other lands, are
skeptical as to the reality of the stories told in the songs.
Thus I remember once hearing our old nurse telling a number
of stories and singing a number of songs to the little folk in