book is T ' 
 
 .TATE Ml SCHOOL, 
 
 DOS A'K$W;K-
 
 THE 
 
 PLACE OF THE STORY 
 
 EARLY EDUCATION 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 SARA E. WILTSE 
 
 BOSTON, U.S.A. 
 PUBLISHED BY GINN & COMPANY 
 
 1892
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1892, 
 BY SARA E. W1LTSE. 
 
 'TYPOGRAPHY BY J. S. GUSHING & Co., BOSTON, U.S.A. 
 
 PRBSSWORK BY GINN & Co., BOSTON, U.S.A.
 
 Educatioi 
 Library 
 
 / 1 17 
 
 THE Author gratefully acknowledges the courtesy 
 of the editors of the Christian Register, the Christian 
 Union, and the American Journal of Psychology in 
 allowing this reprint of essays which first appeared in 
 their columns.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PLACE OF THE STORY IN EARLY EDUCATION . . 1 
 STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 PART I. The Child a Volume to be read . .14 
 
 PART II. Physical Phenomena an Alphabet of 
 
 Feeling 23 
 
 PART III. Thought succeeding Feeling : Ryth- 
 
 mic Sense an Intellectiial Lever .... 32 
 
 PART IV. Finger Songs related to Family 
 
 Life and the Imaginative Faculty ... 41 
 
 PART V. Songs and Games for the Cultiva- 
 tion of the Senses : Their Eight Use and 
 their Dangers 51 
 
 PART VI. Natural Phenomena related to the 
 
 Spiritual Life of the Child 60 
 
 PART VII. The Dull Child the Wise Man's 
 
 Problem . . . , 67 
 
 v
 
 VI CONTENTS. 
 
 TAOK 
 
 CHILDREN'S HA KITS TO 
 
 LEARNING. TO USE MONEY 93 
 
 SOUND-BLINDNESS 99 
 
 A STUDY OF ADOLESCENCE 108 
 
 MI.NTAL IMAOEUY OK BOYS 118
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 THE writer of this book loves children. She has 
 voluntarily gone down from work in higher grades 
 to teach the youngest. She is an excellent story- 
 teller to children. Like Dujardin, she does not 
 believe in art for art's sake ; but out of a mind well- 
 stored with the best, she adapts, and often invents, 
 her tales as a means of moral improvement. 
 
 The woman's kingdom is fast coming in school 
 work, as statistics everywhere show. It should be a 
 kingdom in which love is supreme. Perhaps men 
 teachers are more prone to regard chiefly the subject- 
 matter of culture, to mechanize, to instruct, to re- 
 spect logical order. But all teaching, especially that 
 of the very young, must always be a work of love 
 to be really effective. This was its original motive ; 
 yet, so far have we gone in our idolatry of the mate- 
 rial of culture, so far have we forgotten that the 
 dominant motive of the Great Teacher must animate 
 all good and true teaching, that it seems almost like 
 a Copernicus-revolution to make the child, and not 
 knowledge, the centre of the whole educational sys- 
 tem, and to insist that its nature and need must 
 dominate everything in education, and that child-
 
 Vlll INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 study so directed as to instruct concerning child- 
 nature and to awaken child-love, should be the 
 beginning of the teacher's wisdom. 
 
 Love of childhood and youth has always been one 
 of the strongest incentives to high thoughts and 
 noble deeds. All the teachings of Socrates seem 
 inspired by love of the best Greek youths. The 
 same was true of Fichte. Pestalozzi found his in- 
 spiration in the love of younger and less favored 
 children, and Froebel's heart went out toward the 
 promise and potency of yet younger children. 
 Between two teachers, one trained in the best nor- 
 mal college, but unsympathetic and devoted to 
 ready-made methods, and the other with a heart 
 full of love, but ignorant of even the three R's, 
 what parent of young children would hesitate ? 
 The love would bring the knowledge, but knowl- 
 edge cannot bring the love. This author does what 
 she can to stir up women to do in their own way 
 what men have long striven to do in theirs, and 
 would see knowledge, not less but ever more, every- 
 where subordinated, as she seeks to subordinate the 
 story, as a means to mental and moral growth. 
 
 G. STANLEY HALL. 
 
 ASHFIELD, MASS., August 30, 1892.
 
 THE PLACE OF THE STORY IN 
 
 EARLY EDUCATION. 1 
 
 .- > . c 
 
 ^/f 3 
 
 To rightly place the story, one must first 
 know something of. its history. That the stories 
 of a people have given us our best glimpses of 
 the life of that people is no less true than that 
 the character of its individuals has been modi- 
 fied by these same tales. Sir George W. Cox, 
 who has made a searching study of the myths 
 of the Aryan nations, says there is ample evi- 
 dence that the popular tales of Germany, Nor- 
 way and India at the present day were well 
 known in Greece and elsewhere for centuries 
 before the Christian era, and they form in the 
 strictest sense of the words, and have formed for 
 thousands of years, the folk-lore, or learning of 
 
 * Read before the Eastern Kindergarten Association of Boston, 
 
 Mass*
 
 the people, embodying practically their whole 
 knowledge of the outer world. 
 
 Such is the antiquity of the popular story. 
 
 The educated and the uneducated can meet 
 in perfect sympathy upon this common ground. 
 The delight in Norse and Greek myths is not a 
 royal one the man who traces them through 
 the various languages in which they may have 
 been clothed may, perchance, hear the same 
 stories with Irish brogue or German accent 
 wherever children congregate to " tell stories." 
 
 Odin and Baldner, Freya and Brynhild, Jupi- 
 ter, Juno and lo, with their loves and lives, 
 afford the student of folk-lore such delight that 
 he is in danger of forgetting that here in the 
 nineteenth century we have hero-worshippers, 
 miracle-believers, myth-makers all i the per- 
 son of the little child. 
 
 This period in the child's life corresponds to 
 that in the life of the race when a rainbow was 
 the bridge to heaven, and a flower the slipper 
 of Venus. 
 
 We have no right to trifle with our little myth- 
 maker. We have no right to tell him all the
 
 IN EARLY EDUCATION. 6 
 
 old stories simply because they are old. The 
 tragedy of Red Riding Hood is not better than 
 the story of the Water Babies simply because 
 it is older ; we must have some other standard 
 of value for literature than that for cheese. 
 
 The old stories fed the patriotism of the peo- 
 ple ; they nourished the morals and sustained 
 the courage of men and women ; Beauty 
 vanquished the Beast and restored him to his 
 princely birthright goodness triumphed the 
 very garments of the gods were near enough 
 for the common people to touch them. 
 
 But we must have a specific plan and purpose 
 for our story. It cannot be better shown than 
 by a few illustrations. The value of the per- 
 sonal equation is sufficient apology for using 
 my own stories for this purpose. 
 
 There was in my kindergarten many years 
 ago a little boy whose deceit and cruelty were 
 quite abnormal ; he would smile in my face with 
 seraphic sweetness while with his heavy shoe he 
 would be crushing his neighbor's toes ; he would 
 put his arm about a playmate with a facial ex- 
 pression of great tenderness and drive a pin into
 
 4 THE PLACE OF THE STORY 
 
 the arm he pretended to caress. All usual meth- 
 ods of correction were exhausted, and yet he 
 seemed incorrigible. At last I wrote a story 
 entitled the Fairy True Child, into which I put 
 my strongest effort to reach this untruthful 
 child. I told it to the class, and before it was 
 concluded this boy's head was low upon his 
 breast, his cheeks aflame with conscious guilt. 
 No direct reference was made to him ; no other 
 child thought of him in connection with the 
 story. The next day he asked to have it re- 
 peated, and his conduct was noticeably better; 
 the story became his moral tonic, and one glad 
 day he threw his arms about me, saying he 
 wanted to keep his Fairy True Child always. 
 At the end of the year, when he was to be pro- 
 moted to primary school, his father visited the 
 kindergarten, begging that he might be retained 
 there another year; for something had appar- 
 ently remade the child, he had grown so gentle 
 with the baby at home, and until of late they 
 had had grave fears of his killing it. 
 
 I made the acquaintance of a feeble-minded 
 child. His greatest difficulty seemed to lie in a
 
 IN EARLY EDUCATION. 5 
 
 frightful mental inertia. Some of his thoughts 
 were beautiful, but he would dream of the Lore- 
 lei when he ought to be mastering the multi- 
 plication table, and his personal habits were 
 quite disgusting. He became fond of me, and 
 when I left him for my summer vacation it 
 was with a promise that I would write a story 
 expressly for him. Never did I set myself a 
 more difficult task and with more anxiety 
 than ever went with manuscript to a publisher 
 I sent him this : 
 
 THE LORELEI AND THE LOST FAIRY. 
 
 On the banks of the Rhine sat a lovely Lor- 
 elei. Her eyes were blue as the corn-flower, her 
 hair floated over her shoulders like a cloud 
 of spun gold, and her smile was like the sun- 
 shine after rain. Her snowy, but soft, warm 
 hands were clasped behind her head. She was 
 resting after a playful plunge in the water. All 
 these made her look like some painter's dream 
 of happiness ; at least, so thought a tearful, home- 
 sick little fairy who came near the Lorelei as if 
 to worship, where he dared not hope for com-
 
 O THE PLACE OF THE STORY 
 
 fort ; but the Lorelei saw his tear-stained face, 
 and taking him upon the tip of her pretty 
 white finger she asked him of his home and 
 his sorrows. 
 
 "Alas! beautiful Lorelei," said the tiny, half- 
 starved fairy, " my home should be across the 
 sea,- but the little German boy who ought to 
 shelter and love me, cruelly neglects and lets 
 me wander friendless and alone, while he sits 
 dreaming of you. I should now be a beautiful 
 creature, strong and glorious, but for the care- 
 lessness of one of our own German children." 
 Here the little fairy began to shiver with cold, 
 and the Lorelei seated him in the pink palm of 
 one hand, while she curved the other over him 
 like a rosy shell, and breathed upon his ragged 
 little figure until he was warm again ; then she 
 begged him to tell her the whole of his most 
 pitiful story. 
 
 " I suppose you know, lovely Lorelei," he 
 began, " that whenever a German child is born, 
 a fairy is sent to grow with him, a fairy which 
 is but a tiny baby fairy as he is a tiny baby boy. 
 But alas ! alas ! the fairy cannot grow without
 
 IN EARLY EDUCATION. 7 
 
 the help of the child ; and although the child 
 may grow tall and strong without the help of 
 the fairy, it will be only strength of body which 
 the child will have, for he will never be great 
 and manly without his fairy, though he should 
 become tall as Karl the Great, and of Karl the 
 Great people still say, 'Ah ! there was a man 
 with a ivill,' and I sometimes wish that I might 
 have been his fairy companion, for then I would 
 have been helped to grow, instead of being 
 allowed to wander until I am lost," and the 
 poor little fairy cried again ; then the Lorelei 
 held the sobbing mite against her warm cheek, 
 and while he cuddled within a dimple that 
 looked like a rose-petal cradle, the Lorelei told 
 him she would go with him to find the German 
 boy to whom he belonged, but the fairy said : 
 "Ach ! I fear he will not take me, for I must 
 trouble him about small things before he can do 
 great ones, and he often refuses to hear me 
 when I tell him to wash his hands, or properly 
 dress himself ; his patient teacher is ready to 
 cry with me, because he will sit dreaming of 
 great men and beautiful women, when he should
 
 8 THE PLACE OF THE STORY 
 
 be doing homely duties, and when he neglects 
 me, I starve and shrink, and what is worse, he 
 slips backward in his work, getting farther and 
 farther from the great Kaiser, whom he still 
 loves, and wishes to be like. Oh ! if he would 
 but take me home and listen to me, he would 
 grow beautiful in mind, and I should not be a 
 ragged, homesick little fairy, but a very prince 
 among my brothers." 
 
 The Lorelei looked with wondering blue eyes 
 at the shivering fairy, who had left the dimple 
 in her cheek and was wringing his wee hands in 
 grief as he stood on her finger again. 
 
 "Why, what are you?" she asked. 
 
 The little arms were folded, and the tiny fairy 
 stood quite erect, taking on for the moment 
 some of the beauty and dignity which was his 
 birthright, as he answered in clear, sweet tones : 
 
 " I AM THAT WHICH WILLS ! " 
 
 " Beautiful Lorelei ! I want to grow, but I 
 can only grow as my companion helps me, and 
 allows me to help him. I might be like Bis- 
 marck's fairy, or like the go^ft~l2ae^s, but my
 
 IN EARLY EDUCATION. 9 
 
 boy thinks when he ought to act ; loses himself 
 in idle dreams of the Fatherland, when he ought 
 to be doing something worthy of a native Ger- 
 man, if it were but to tie his own shoes as well 
 as Karl the Great could tie his; and. then he 
 bows his head and cries over his failures, instead 
 of lifting his face and holding himself erect 
 while he says, i I loill do these little things until 
 I can do great ones,' and I, his fairy Will, grow 
 weaker and smaller. Can you help me, Lor- 
 elei?" and the little fairy knelt in the palm of 
 her hand, while she made answer: "Take this 
 drop of honey, poor little wanderer; it will 
 refresh you," and she held a dewy kaiserblume 
 to his lips, and when he had tasted the sweet 
 honey he fell asleep, and the Lorelei wrapped 
 him in her scarf, folded him upon her breast, 
 and started upon a journey. Sometimes she 
 swam across waters, sometimes she rested upon 
 billowy clouds, and sometimes glided down 
 the many-lmed curve of a rainbow, but always 
 her face was toward America and the German 
 boy whose Will was lost; and when she found 
 him sleeping as his fairy slept, she came s.oftly
 
 10 THE PLACE OF THE oToKV 
 
 through a stream of moonlight, and, bending 
 over his pillow, kissed his eyes, and ever 
 after they more readily sought the meaning of 
 the books ; breathed softly upon his lips, and 
 ever after they were more ready with song and 
 with lessons; put her fingers upon his ears, 
 and ever after they were more attentive to his 
 teacher's words; and the fairy awoke, not on 
 the bosom of the Lorelei, but in his own home 
 in Ludwig's brain, where he grows more and 
 more princely, and Ludwig more and more 
 manly, trying hard, so very hard, to keep the 
 dear little fairy on his throne. 
 
 The effect upon his will was better than I 
 dared hope. His teacher wrote me that she 
 read it to him every third day, always on 
 condition of his having earned the right to 
 hear it by obedience to his own good fairy Will. 
 This supplied the needed stimulus for weeks in 
 succession. 
 
 I knew a delightful, imaginative boy of seven 
 in a Western city. He seemed ideally polite and
 
 IN EARLY EDUCATION. 11 
 
 obedient to his parents, so I was quite shocked 
 when his mother asked if I would advise her to 
 chastise him for an annoying habit in which he 
 persisted ; viz., putting on his shoes and button- 
 ing them every morning before putting on his 
 trousers, which of course would not go on over 
 the shoes; and this daily blunder rendered him 
 quite miserable as well as his parents. He 
 would cry with shame and disappointment be- 
 cause he missed his breakfast with his father, 
 promising to try to remember, but so regularly 
 forgetting that his parents began to suspect 
 some latent stubbornness if not deceit in the oc- 
 currence. When I left this hospitable house I 
 wrote a letter to the child, who was fond of all 
 military displays and stories, telling him I was 
 sorry to hear that General Bad Habit was quar- 
 tered in his house ; that I greatly feared my 
 little friend would be reduced to the ranks if he 
 did not make immediate resistance ; might he 
 not use my letter as a flag of truce to be placed 
 in his shoe over night, informing General Bad 
 Habit tliat our little boy proposed not only to
 
 12 THE PLACE OF THE STORY 
 
 resist him, but to take away his title, sword, 
 and shoulder straps. 
 
 The flag of truce was used in the shoe two or 
 three nights, then placed on the mantel, and in 
 less than a week entirely removed, and a letter 
 from the triumphant child informed me that 
 Bad Habit was reduced to the ranks, and my 
 friend was master of the situation ! Cases 
 might be indefinitely multiplied, proving the 
 value of stories not only in education, but in 
 discipline of the child. 
 
 We have no right to tell stories thought- 
 lessly, nor is the pleasure of the audience a 
 valid test of the worth of our story. 
 
 We have no right to isolate a story in a day's 
 life ; and just here lies the power of the story 
 for a child its vital relation to other things 
 in that child's life. There is no bad habit, no 
 wrong tendency or weak point that may not be 
 attacked or propped by a right use of the story; 
 no fact in nature or principle of right which 
 may not be treated in the form of a story. 
 
 There is some fear among the most 'thought- 
 ful, that our age of facts and statistics, of turn-
 
 IN EARLY EDUCATION. 13 
 
 ing our wheels with Jupiter's bolts, is destined 
 to crush even the fancy of little children. But 
 a butcher's errand boy recently asked me what 
 really became of Europa after she rode into the 
 sea ; he had looked the whole book through and 
 was afraid Cadmus never found her. A lisping 
 child of three years clasped his arms about my 
 neck after a simple story, and said, " More ! 
 more ! more ! " And to draw him out I said, 
 "More of what?" 
 
 And under his breath he whispered, " More of 
 God." 
 
 A child living in the shadow of one of our 
 great universities drew for me a picture of God 
 with head of sky, and suns for eyes, his cloud 
 garments buttoned with stars. 
 
 Need we fear? Surely neither poetry nor 
 religion will die out of our world if we permit 
 a little child to trim our lamp of life.
 
 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 1 
 I. 
 
 THE CHILD A VOLUME TO BE READ. 
 
 What we are able to do for children is measured by the 
 love we bear them. MAUAM PAI-E CAUPEXTIEB. 
 
 WHEN the disciples disputed about precedence 
 in the kingdom of heaven, the Master set a 
 little child in their midst, saying, " Except ye 
 become as little children, ye shall in nowise 
 enter into the kingdom of heaven." And 
 before dismissing the child he gave utterance 
 to those wonderful, perhaps mystical words : 
 "In heaven their angels do always behold the 
 face of my Father which is in heaven." 
 
 It is this volume of child-nature which I wish 
 you to study with me a volume written in 
 
 'Course of lectures given in Detroit, Michigan. 
 U
 
 THE CHILD A VOLUME TO BE READ. 15 
 
 many languages, and often translated to suit the 
 mood of the careless reader. To one woman 
 her child is a comic scrap-book, and she repeats 
 and remembers all he says or does that appeals 
 to her own sense pf humor ; to another he is 
 a book of mysticism, and his simplest inquiries 
 or most logical deductions are treated as prophe- 
 cies or oracles ; to another he is a precious reve- 
 lation of divine love and mystery ; while alas ! 
 to some he is only a little animal, his playfulness 
 more troublesome than the kitten's, because he 
 cannot be thrust out-of-doors when he annoys, 
 and his chatter more trying than the sparrows' 
 of early morning because it is indoors. 
 
 But the continuous and careful observation of 
 children is in great demand, and a mother's 
 opportunity is better than that of any other 
 student. The work needs the scientific spirit 
 and some preparatory training, but woman is 
 surely equal to such a task. 
 
 Miss Buckley is an acknowledged authority 
 in one branch of science, and Caroline Herschel 
 in another. Art, literature, even politics and 
 the professions, are adorned with the names of
 
 16 TI1E STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 \vi >men ; but in this particular field of investiga- 
 tion we have little or nothing that will stand 
 the scientific test. Mothers have observed their 
 own children, failed to record their observations, 
 and can give us but haphazard and untrust- 
 worthy accounts even of physical growth, to 
 say nothing of the more complex development 
 of w r ill and intellect. That which has been 
 observed and transcribed puts us under obli- 
 gation to the men who have done much which 
 we have left undone in the nursery. 
 
 Plato saw a divine meaning in the plays of 
 children, and did not disdain to consider the 
 toys and games of children as affecting char- 
 acter, and would have had no stories told the 
 children that were not first examined and 
 approved by legislators. 
 
 Rousseau revolutionized society in France by 
 his espousal of Baby's rights ; Pestalozzi broke 
 the paper chain that bound the children to 
 their primers, and gave this advice to mothers : 
 " Teach your children to pray, that they may be 
 willing to work ; and to work that they may 
 never grow tired of praying." Froebel lived
 
 THE CHILD A VOLUME TO BE EEAD. 17 
 
 with the children, studying popular nursery 
 melodies and games, with their effects upon 
 mental development ; and his spirit is revo- 
 lutionizing the primary schools, not only of 
 Germany, but of America. Darwin has given 
 us a " Sketch of an Infant " ; Sully a short 
 chapter on Baby Linguistics. We are indebted 
 to G. Stanley Hall for an impetus to study for 
 ourselves, no less than for his valuable contribu- 
 tions to the literature which is as yet so meagre 
 that we can find little that is authoritative, though 
 there is much which is speculative. Preyer, a 
 German philosopher, has carefully observed the 
 development of the senses, will, and intellect 
 of his own child, giving some comparisons with 
 other children coming under his notice ; and 
 the book is a revelation of what we do not 
 know. To make his book and Perez's " First 
 Three Years of Childhood " really of the greatest 
 service to us, w r e need enough investigation in 
 the same lines for a basis of statistics. 
 
 All this is the work of men who might cer- 
 tainly excuse themselves from such effort with 
 the apology which mothers will make occupa-
 
 18 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 tion in other directions. Women have written 
 books, and many of them admirable ones, for 
 children ; they have given us works on family 
 government and methods of education ; but 
 what have we from their graceful and ready 
 pens that helps to a knowledge of early lan- 
 guage, the imitative faculty, the rhythmic sense, 
 or that period of savagery that sometimes 
 enthralls even the best boys for a season ? 
 
 Usually woman comes in much closer contact 
 with children than man ; her nature fits her 
 for more sympathetic interpretation of all the 
 activities of childhood, and her sympathy need 
 not vitiate her scientific exactitude of transcrip- 
 tion ; for, like the students of child life in the 
 Worcester State Normal School, she can spare 
 us her own conclusions, giving the simple facts 
 observed. 
 
 We rear children, and we teach them, but 
 how closely have we studied the deceptions of 
 children that we may understand motives, and 
 so treat the 'child for the cause and not for the 
 symptom ? Many a conscientious mother and 
 teacher knows no middle ground between a lie
 
 THE CHILD A VOLUME TO BE BEAD. 19 
 
 which may be shockingly immoral and danger- 
 ous to the child's soul, or harmless except as 
 it is misunderstood by older people. I perfectly 
 remember two lies, told in very early childhood, 
 that affected my conscience very 'differently 
 without outside influence. I was sent by my 
 mother to get an oak leaf for a pattern for 
 needle-work, and near the oak shrub I saw a 
 snake which so frightened me that I ran home 
 without the leaf. My brothers met me before I 
 reached my mother, and, as all snakes were 
 'saugers to me, I told them I had seen a 'sauger. 
 They knew a difference between snakes and 
 their habits, and, boy-like, wanted to tease me, 
 and said, "'twas no 'sauger it didn't have a 
 red ring around its neck, now did it?" My 
 heated imagination saw just such a serpent 
 as soon as their words were spoken, and I de- 
 clared it had a ring about its neck. Well, they 
 urged, it didn't have great scales like a fish, and 
 it wasn't a 'sauger at all. I sobbed that it had 
 scales, and the teasing boys added that it must 
 have had a little bell on its neck then, 
 and I saw the bell, the red ring, and the
 
 20 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 scales in my imagination, and was unable to 
 separate the mental picture from the real sight, 
 and have to this day as vivid a mental image of 
 a snake of that description as I have of any 
 grass snake that ever glided across my path. I 
 remember that my brothers gravely accused me 
 of lying, but I did not understand them, and my 
 peace of mind was undisturbed. The other lie 
 was never discovered, I was never charged with 
 it ; but my own moral nature, self-arraigned, 
 created a cyclone of grief and terror. It was 
 fear of the lie itself, for I had never been chas- 
 tised, and have no recollection of the moral teach- 
 ing which must have preceded it. I was very 
 fond of babies, and, being the youngest of the 
 family at that time, a baby cousin across the 
 way received my care and affection. My mother 
 had to restrain me from making myself trouble- 
 some, and I could only go when my aunt ex- 
 pressly wished my services. One afternoon 
 mother was going away to tea, and I boldly an- 
 nounced that my aunt was very busy and had 
 asked me to spend an hour with the baby, to 
 which my mother readily assented. I went, not
 
 THE CHILD A VOLUME TO BE READ. 21 
 
 to the baby, but by a circuitous route to my 
 father's barn, crept behind one of the great 
 doors, which I drew as close to me as I could, 
 vaguely wishing the barn and the hay-stacks 
 would cover me ; there I cried and moaned, I do 
 not know how many hours, and when I went to 
 bed I said my prayers between sobs, refusing to 
 tell my mother why I wept. We need compara- 
 tive reminiscences to aid us in a study of the 
 children we daily meet. Miss Elizabeth P. Pea- 
 body has something valuable in this direction, 
 not yet ready for publication, however, and she 
 has given us some excellent psychological notes, 
 but they cover a period in one child's life which 
 is too brief for generalization. 
 
 Sir John Lubbock tells us much about the 17 
 sensitiveness of ants and bees to color ; Gra- 
 ber proves that some caterpillars show strong 
 color preferences. What do we know of Baby's 
 color sense ? We have only lately learned that 
 the majority of children of five years of age 
 prefer yellow. 
 
 There are dangers to be avoided in the obser- 
 vations so much needed. Do not use pencil and
 
 22 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 paper in the presence of the child. Keep the 
 observations of each child by itself, with age, 
 sex, and nationality of the child at the begin- 
 ning, and the dates of succeeding observations. 
 Do not repeat the child's sayings or doings in 
 his presence. Do not stimulate him in the in- 
 teresting and entertaining directions of growth. 
 The training goes hand in hand with the 
 study of the child, and we are not modelling 
 in clay, nor chiselling in marble. We are not 
 writing on fair white paper ; heredity has had 
 the first opportunit}^ at the page, and the 
 mind is crossed and recrossed with hieroglyphic 
 characters. It is our duty and our privilege 
 to decipher, perhaps to erase, and to such 
 study and such labor you are invited.
 
 II. 
 
 PHYSICAL PHENOMENA AN ALPHABET OF 
 FEELING. 
 
 People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success 
 in life is to be a good animal. SPENCER. 
 
 EVEN the untutored mother responds to much 
 of the natural language of her child; mothers 
 have ever crooned to their infants, patted or 
 trotted them as they fancied their physical con- 
 dition demanded. The nursery songs to be 
 analyzed by us are those written by Froebel, or 
 by pupils who have imbibed his spirit. These 
 particular melodies are recommended because 
 they are based upon popular nursery songs. It 
 is well known to special students in this direc- 
 tion that Froebel went from house to house 
 among the German peasants, collecting from 
 mothers, nurses, and children even, the frag- 
 ments of song that have been handed down 
 from mother to child for many generations ; this 
 
 23
 
 24 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 mass of material he submitted to his own keen 
 but reverent criticism, culling that which was 
 educational, casting out that which was delete- 
 rious, giving us his revision and commentaries 
 in his " Mutter und Kose Lieder." We are so 
 doubtful of the practicability of new theories 
 that it seems but fair to preface this study 
 with the statement that these games have been 
 tried by believing mothers, and skeptical fathers 
 have admitted their value. 
 
 The first one to be considered is that given 
 /for development of the limbs. The child lies 
 upon a mattress, with legs unencumbered, and 
 strikes out vigorously with his little feet. In 
 earliest infancy these movements are reflex, but 
 they are never meaningless ; the child wishes 
 do not confuse his vague desire with formulated 
 thought the baby lives in his feelings at first, 
 and deeply rooted in this feeling is that which 
 he wishes, viz. to measure his strength. He can- 
 not so measure his strength unless some object is 
 interposed against which he may push and kick. 
 The mother may give her chest, or she may put 
 a cushion between his feet and the footboard
 
 PHYSICAL PHENOMENA. 25 
 
 of bed or crib ; but when he pushes those little 
 feet back and forth under his petticoats, he is 
 giving expression to a feeling to which mother 
 or nurse should respond. The song for this 
 game is adapted to German peasant life, but 
 any mother can replace it with something 
 equally adapted to her surroundings : 
 
 "Come, you little kicking toes, 
 Flax and hemp we will strike with blows ; 
 Oil for our lamp there flows. 
 Clear it burns and clearer grows, 
 When mother's love so clear and strong 
 Guards little baby all night long." 
 
 The song is of great value, but the song with- 
 out the object against which the feet may be 
 pressed would be of little value. Feeling lies 
 deeper than thinking ; the physical need fore- 
 shadows the spiritual ; it is therefore no far- 
 fetched conclusion that the child left to kick the 
 
 air without this resisting force might get thereby 
 
 i 
 a lamentable moral twist. St. Paul spoke as to 
 
 children concerning those who seek the Lord, if 
 haply they might feel after him and find him,
 
 26 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 though he is not far from any of us. We some- 
 times say, glibly enough, that the parent stands 
 to the infant as God to us, and then we are 
 indifferent when asked to apply this in our prac- 
 tical, every-day relations with children. 
 
 The next game is to lift the child from the 
 mattress almost to the sitting posture, and, 
 without removing the hands from underneath, 
 so slacken the hold that the child will get an 
 exhilarating shock a brief instant of separa- 
 tion from the mother's hold, and a certain re- 
 turn to her loving, waiting arms. Again the 
 feeling underlies the thought, and our mature 
 experience should hallow this game for us and 
 the children. A momentary fear that the " ever- 
 lasting arms" are not underneath us, we find 
 has been a high-tide moment when we review 
 our lives ; and the spiritual development of the 
 child is subject to the same laws as our 
 own. 
 
 As soon as the wee hand can grasp its 
 mother's finger, a small worsted ball, with 
 string attached, may be given the child, by 
 which the muscles of the hand will be strength-
 
 PHYSICAL PHENOMENA. 27 
 
 ened. There are practical reasons for giving a 
 ball to the child, which we will consider before 
 the theoretical ones. He cannot hurt himself 
 with the ball ; it may be dropped or flung with- 
 out injury to others or to furniture; it can 
 make no noise; it may be carried to the mouth 
 without injury to child or plaything. 
 
 That the ball has been a fascinating toy, out- 
 living the rattle and the Noah's ark, rests upon 
 a deeper reason. There must be some subtle 
 satisfaction to us in its unity ; the form lends 
 itself to the laws of the physical universe more 
 readily than others, or it would not be found in 
 our veins as in the rivers, among the planets as 
 in mechanics, revealed to us by the microscope 
 no less than by the telescope. From nursery to 
 university the boy carries his ball, modifying it 
 to suit his needs as his skill is developed, and 
 the development of skill involves mental 
 growth. 
 
 In the cradle the ball may become a centre 
 of attraction, around which impressions both 
 physical and spiritual may cluster. Place it in 
 the little hand, and withdraw it again and again,
 
 28 THE STUDY OF CHILDKI.V 
 
 singing some of the Froebel ball songs, and the 
 child will get its earliest vague impressions of 
 the me and the not-me ; of time, present, past, 
 and future, and of space. We cannot, even with 
 a scientific imagination, place ourselves back of 
 our formulated thought into Baby's feeling, but 
 we read in his satisfied or expectant eye, Some- 
 thing not me is here ; it has been here, it will 
 come again. In this play do not suffer the ball 
 to be withdrawn long enough to cause impa- 
 tience ; and employ it but a few moments daily, 
 as an educational influence, to be used with dis- 
 cretion. It has proven potent in crystallizing 
 thought in the brain of the feeble-minded child. 
 Feeling leads to expression, and we have tried 
 to deepen the one by helping the other. 
 
 The ball has another important educational 
 use. Little is really known of the significance 
 of color; it has been left largely to the poet's 
 realm; but Science has fixed her eye upon it, 
 and we wait for her latest word. Perhaps noth- 
 ing more interesting has been given us than the 
 array of individual peculiarities of color percep- 
 tion as furnished by Galton in his " Inquiries
 
 PHYSICAL PHENOMENA. 29 
 
 into the Human Faculty," for we must care 
 more that some man sees the month of January 
 as a blue circle, or the letters of his own name 
 in various shades, than that certain caterpillars 
 show a marked preference in colors; we must 
 care more that the majority of little children 
 recognize yellow earlier than blue than that 
 earthworms and ants are unmistakably suscep- 
 tible to colors, as Graber and Sir John Lubbock 
 have proven. Leaving these scientific observa- 
 tions, and taking the move familiar poetry of 
 color, we must admit that the revelation con- 
 cerning the walls of the New Jerusalem has some 
 foundation in fact, or the fancy is an empty 
 superstition ; that the significance attached to 
 color in altar cloths and church decoration has 
 something upon which to rest beside tradition, 
 or it would not have survived until the present 
 day. Putting aside the associations of colors 
 and their possible spiritual meanings, we cannot 
 ignore their physical effects. 
 
 Some people are nauseated by certain com- 
 binations of color ; some have sick headache in 
 consequence of inspection of shades ; people in
 
 30 THE STUDY OF CIIILDEEN. 
 
 normal health find it impossible to apply them- 
 selves to close mental effort if the curtains of 
 the room are of an annoying shade. 
 
 Preyer's child was unmistakably impressed by 
 a rose-colored curtain on the twenty-third day 
 after its birth, and Preyer says : " In my obser- 
 vations I have had especially in mind the promi- 
 nent part played in the mental development of 
 the child at the earliest period, by the sense of 
 sight." 
 
 If color appeals to the sense of sight so early, 
 ought we not to take it as a valuable aid in 
 early education ? and in what better form can 
 we embody color than in that of the ball ? 
 
 Passing to a later stage of development, we 
 have Froebel's version of "Pat-a-cake " : 
 
 " Baby wants to try to make us 
 Such a cake as he can bake us. 
 Pat the cake ; I'll show you how. 
 Baker says, ' It's quite time now ; 
 Bring the dough, as you are told, 
 Ere my oven gets too cold.' 
 Baker, here is a nice large cake 
 You for Baby so kindly will bake. 
 Deep in the oven, my little one, 
 Push in your cake; it will soon be done."
 
 PHYSICAL PHENOMENA. 31 
 
 With this and kindred games, the child is 
 brought into conscious relations with the outside 
 world, and may be given valuable impressions 
 of the interdependence of mankind. We should 
 not forget the moral power of stories, and we may 
 closely connect with this song Dr. E. E. Hale's 
 story of " Our Daily Bread." An old nursery 
 tale, which I never saw in print until I adapted 
 and published it in my own book of stories, im- 
 presses the -same lesson of interdependence. 
 
 There is, we know, a dangerous undercurrent 
 of contempt of service which mothers find 
 difficult to eradicate ; it is believed that the 
 wholesome use of such songs with talks about 
 the baker, the miller, the farmer, and all who 
 contribute to the furnishing of the bread, and 
 the dependence of all these upon the Giver of 
 rain and sunshine would fortify the child against 
 future contempt of those who perform for us 
 any service whatsoever. 
 
 The growing mind reaches upward ; let us 
 furnish thought-centres that are above rather 
 than below its grasp. We may well take the 
 little child that is in our midst and reverently 
 consider it.
 
 III. 
 
 THOUGHT SUCCEEDING FEELING; RHYTHMIC 
 SENSE AN INTELLECTUAL LEVKK. 
 
 Our aim should be to present to the mind all knowledge in 
 such a way that it may help our pupils along to the undiscov- 
 ered pole of human destiny. G. STANLEY HALL. 
 
 OUR strongest intellectual barks are, after all, 
 safely anchored in our feelings. The baby has 
 many sensations both pleasant and unpleasant 
 before that mental activity which we call thought 
 is unmistakably begun, for we are not of the 
 " intueetion folks who will have it that a babby's 
 got as much mind as Mr. Gladstone, ef it only 
 knew it." 
 
 The reasoning process, however, is well estab- 
 lished before the baby can put his thoughts into 
 words. 
 
 Preyer noticed an indisputable acoustic ex- 
 periment in a child less than a year old. The 
 child struck with a spoon upon a plate, acci- 
 
 32
 
 THOUGHT SUCCEEDING FEELING. 33 
 
 dentally touching the plate with the other hand 
 at the same time, thus dulling the sound ; the 
 plate and spoon changed hands, and the effect of 
 the opposite hand was tried upon the plate, the 
 child listening expectantly, and repeating the 
 experiment many times. Any observer, even 
 the most careless, must have noticed a child's 
 eager inquiry into causality, following with his 
 eye the string from which a ball is suspended to 
 the point of suspension ; looking for the moving 
 hand or figure which casts a shadow, or for the 
 person whose voice is heard from another room. 
 The crying of a child to be taken out when he 
 sees his cap and cloak shows that he has drawn 
 some logical conclusions from past experience. 
 It is only by observation of the child and his 
 expressions that we can arrive at certain knowl- 
 edge of his capacities. We may know some 
 general laws of development, but there is such a 
 wide difference between cases that the need of 
 special study of the individual will probably 
 never be less urgent, although more definite 
 knowledge of general rules will be of great 
 service.
 
 34 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 We shall now consider the rhythmic sense, in- 
 herent in all children, and its importance as an 
 intellectual lever. We know that the outer 
 forces of nature are subject to a law of rhythm ; 
 there seems the throb of a pulse in fire, and a 
 steady rise and fall of sound in the cataract of 
 Niagara ; the cyclone moves under a law of 
 time that we practically observe, calculating its 
 progress and preparing for its arrival ; a law of 
 harmony governs the planets in their courses, so 
 that " the music of the spheres " is not merely a 
 figure of speech ; our hearts beat with such 
 rhythm that any departure from its regularity 
 gives us great alarm. Something in the child's 
 nature corresponds to that outward harmony, 
 /so that rhythm calls unto rhythm, as deep unto 
 deep. This explains why the child is hushed by 
 rhythmic movement, which need not be voiced, 
 as we daily see in the nursery, where the child 
 is patted, swayed in the arms, or rocked instinc- 
 tively " in time." Every nurse feels that a 
 sudden stopping of the swing of the cradle would 
 startle the baby. Nor do we outgrow this 
 pleasure in rhythmic movement. Sing, if you
 
 THOUGHT SUCCEEDING FEELING. 35 
 
 please, a few bars of any familiar air, agreeing 
 to stop instantly at a signal from another, and 
 let the signal come before the musical pause is 
 reached, and your own disagreeable sensation 
 will bear witness to that inner sense which 
 should not be rudely jarred. 
 
 We see that the mother's instinct leads her to 
 sing to the child, and to give him rhythmic 
 movements ; but we need an intellectual and 
 moral power added to the physical one, and this 
 is found in some of the songs recommended. 
 Every child is strongly attracted to the sound 
 and the movement of the clock pendulum. A 
 little talk about the clocks that told the wrong 
 time brought the attention of an untruthful 
 child to truthfulness, and, without a word from 
 the outside as to his habit, the child, though but 
 four years old, would blush and correct himself, 
 on beginning a false statement, when his teacher 
 glanced ruefully at the clock, which became a 
 symbol of truth to him. 
 
 If we attend to the things which command the 
 child's interest, we may find in them many an 
 aid to good government. By a little study we
 
 36 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 may abstract from many things the one point of 
 interest as, for instance, the life in the flight 
 of birds, in the movement of fish, and in the cat 
 or dog, is undoubtedly that which attracts the 
 child ; there is no life without movement, and no 
 movement which is not subject to the rhythmic 
 law. If, therefore, we intelligently use this law, 
 we gain something in the increasingly difficult 
 business of home management. 
 
 Preyer's baby noticed the ticking of a clock 
 on the one hundred and first day of its life. I 
 showed a clock pendulum to a child nine 
 months old, and, taking his hand in mine, 
 moved it back and forth in time with the pendu- 
 lum, singing one of the tick-tack songs : 
 
 " Come and see, come and see 
 How merrily the clock doth go. 
 The pendulum swings to and fro, 
 And never from its plan doth go ; 
 Swings first to the left and then to the right, 
 All the day and all the night, 
 Tick-tack, tick-tack, tick-tack." 
 
 This was repeated three or four times in one 
 day ; the following day, when he heard the air,
 
 THOUGHT SUCCEEDING FEELING. 37 
 
 he turned his face to the clock, and on the third 
 day moved his own hand on hearing the words 
 sung, looking wishfully at the clock. 
 
 I gave my watch to a baby six months old, 
 and she carried it to her mouth ; I took her 
 hand in mine and carried the watch to her ear, 
 then to mine, repeating this many times, and 
 on letting go of her hand she continued the 
 movement with evident pleasure, although she 
 sometimes made irregular movements toward 
 her mouth, from muscular habit. Her mother 
 joined the game, and the baby's hand was 
 directed by mine to her ear, then to my own, 
 and lastly to the child's. A few successive 
 times and the child was soon able to make this 
 circuit, but before she was tired, or had satisfied 
 herself with her new power, the mother turned 
 her ear away from the proffered hand, and 
 seized the watch in her own mouth ; which so 
 enraged the baby investigator that the pretty 
 and useful play was interrupted by angry shrieks, 
 which perhaps amused the mother as much as 
 any other exhibition of her child's nature ; but 
 to the thoughtful person it seems like a stupid
 
 38 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 interference in an intellectual pursuit, and a prov- 
 ocation to anger, which, if frequently repeated, 
 would demoralize a child. 
 
 There are a few songs in which the rhythm is 
 so strongly marked that they are of great value 
 in rousing the child's intellectual activities. 
 "The Mill," "See-Saw," "The Carpenter," 
 " Shoemaker," and " Blacksmith," have proven 
 most helpful. In the Boston School for Feeble- 
 minded, the children in the kindergarten have 
 an especial liking for the " Blacksmith," which 
 struck me as remarkably coinciding with the 
 tastes of f eeble-minded children under my own 
 observation ; the rhythm and the open vowel 
 sounds of the chorus (" Strike, boys ! strike, boys, 
 while the iron is red hot ") furnish some children 
 their first opportunity of enunciation, and, like 
 other children, they rejoice in every acquire- 
 ment. I went from child to child as they were 
 singing and gesticulating, and all were gleefully 
 uttering, " i oy, i oy, i i ed ot." Marching songs 
 are also valuable aids in mental development. I 
 took a feeble-minded child of six years and nine 
 months in my arms, marching to and fro while
 
 THOUGHT SUCCEEDING FEELING. 39 
 
 I sang little marching airs, stopping long enough 
 between songs for her to get an impression of 
 the difference between moving and standing, and 
 it was but a few days before she began to make 
 rhythmical noises as we marched, and in a short 
 time she was able to walk with the aid of my 
 hand to steady her movements, although she 
 had never before been roused to any desire 
 for walking. With the help of these and kin- 
 dred aids her will has been roused to hopeful 
 activity, and she not only acts in response to 
 her will, but has arrived at some healthful in- 
 hibitions. 
 
 There is room for much study of the sensibility 
 of children to music ; the effect of minor tones 
 upon children has only been noticed in isolated 
 cases. I lately saw a baby of three months that 
 would put up its lip in most pathetic fashion 
 when his father said, " Poor little boy ! poor 
 little boy ! " in a mournful tone, and if the 
 father continued, tears would fill the child's eyes ; 
 but tears gave place to laughter when the tone 
 was changed and the father said, " Happy little 
 boy ! happiest little boy in Detroit ! " The same
 
 40 THE STUDY OF CIIILDllKN. 
 
 child is perceptibly affected by certain airs upon 
 the piano-forte. 
 
 Observations carefully written out, with age, 
 sex, and nationality of child, would have a psy- 
 chological value. The age at which a child 
 becomes able to keep time with hands, feet, or 
 head, with the history of its failures, would be 
 of more than family interest, and it is only by 
 many such transcribed observations that we can 
 arrive at any knowledge which has scientific 
 value.
 
 IV. 
 
 FINGER SONGS RELATED TO FAMILY LIFE AND 
 THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY. 
 
 The understanding is not a vessel that needs filling ; it is a 
 fuel that needs kindling. PLUTARCH. 
 
 HERE SCHULTE observed a child that looked ' 
 attentively at its own hands in the sixteenth 
 week of its life. I remember a child that used 
 its thumb and forefinger with amusing deftness 
 at nine months of age. How long he had done 
 this when I observed him his mother could not 
 tell. It seems strange that this universally 
 interesting period in the child's development 
 has not been observed with accuracy, or re- 
 corded, so that we may find the average age of 
 the normal child's first notice of his fingers and 
 toes. Some mothers think children observe their 
 hands at the age of six weeks, and I have seen 
 a child of six years who had not yet reached 
 that stage of mental development. 
 
 41
 
 42 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 The chick just from its shell can pick up its 
 food with unerring strokes of its tiny beak; the 
 lamb has the use of its legs the first day of its 
 life, the young animal having an inheritance of 
 muscular power quite in excess of that of a 
 child. But the glorious birthright of man is 
 self-developing power. 
 
 A little observation teaches us the individu- 
 ality of the hand. People who carefully train 
 the face to immobility, and pride themselves 
 upon allowing the features to tell no tales of 
 passing feeling, often betray many emotions 
 through unconscious attitudes and gestures of 
 the hands. Dr. Warner gives an entire chapter 
 in his book, " The Children : How to Study 
 Them," to the importance of these unconscious 
 habits of hand position and motion. Much may 
 be known of physical conditions from the man- 
 ner of using the hands, and physical conditions 
 are often, if not always, closely interwoven with 
 mental and even spiritual life. 
 
 Dr. E. H. Clarke, in " BuilHing of a Brain," 
 demonstrates that brain power depends largely 
 upon activity of the hands, and ambidexterity
 
 FINGEK SONGS. 43 
 
 is now cultivated with direct reference to its 
 value in this direction. One of the strongest 
 arguments in favor of manual training is the 
 benefit to the brain in such practice. 
 
 Le Conte, in " Evolution and Its Relation to 
 Religious Thought," speaks of the recent start- 
 ling advances made in physiology, and speculates 
 concerning future developments in this direction, 
 saying that we may find a right-handed rotation 
 of atoms associated with love, and a left-handed 
 rotation associated with hate, or a gentle, side- 
 ways oscillation associated with consciousness, 
 and a vertical pounding associated with will. 
 The hands of the Venus de Medici, Diana, and 
 the Dying Gladiator furnish examples of various 
 attributes wrought in marble. In literature we 
 have perhaps nothing more characteristic than 
 Silas Lapham's hairy paw, and its resemblance, 
 when gloved, to a yellow-cased, sugar-cured 
 ham. Delsarte emphasizes the hand as a means 
 of expression. Clara Morris, in " Miss Multon," 
 makes one scene almost tragic by the interlacing 
 of her fingers as she stands with her back to 
 the audience, uttering no word, but, with hands
 
 44 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 clenched behind her, and face probably smiling 
 upon her tormentor, she gives marvellous expres- 
 sion to the agony of her soul. One can never 
 forget Booth's finger interpretation of Hamlet's 
 suppressed passion in the scene with Guilden- 
 stern, while his more eloquent lips declare : 
 " Call me what instrument you will, though 
 you can fret me, you cannot play upon me." 
 
 Salvini's hands made his Italian Othello 
 almost as easily understood as if it had been 
 rendered in our native tongue. 
 
 We must remember that the child's hand is^ 
 an instrument of which he has to learn the use 
 by a very complicated and slow process. We 
 may help him to the highest use of it, or leave 
 him to blunder even in mechanical skill with it. 
 When he first becomes conscious of possession 
 of hands, we may wisely introduce some of 
 Froebel's finger games, which strengthen the 
 muscles and aid in deftness of hand, while the 
 mind is directed to the family relations as repre- 
 sented by the fingers. Taking the little thumb 
 and each finger successively, we may sing :
 
 FINGER SONGS. 45 
 
 "This is the grand-papa, 
 This is the grand-mamma, 
 This is the father dear, 
 This is the mother dear, 
 This is the little child - 
 See all the family here." 
 
 This game helps the child in differentiating 
 his fingers, brings him back to the unity of all 
 many fingers and one hand as there are 
 many individuals and one family in his little 
 world. The dawning consciousness of the child 
 so turned to the family relations is surely better 
 than the old nursery method of playing " This 
 little pig went to market." The superiority, 
 even from the physical side of the songs, is imme- 
 diately seen, the fingers being destined to more 
 important work than the toes, therefore needing 
 more attention to the development of flexibility > 
 The particularly meretricious nursery song 
 " This little pig said, I'm going to grandpa's 
 barn" should not pass unnoticed. In this we 
 have boastfulness, curiosity, proposed theft, tale- 
 bearing, and defeated effort on the part of the 
 smallest pig, who cries with grief because of his
 
 46 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 lack of strength. Do not imagine these things 
 never stir the deep spiritual fountains of child 
 nature they certainly do. 
 
 The early power of a mother's example can 
 hardly be overrated ; on her depends much of 
 the child's future estimate of the sacredness of 
 the family relations. If every man could truth- 
 fully giye such an account of home harmony as 
 Ruskin pictures in his little autobiographical 
 sketch, we should soon have the millennium. 
 We are ready to admit that daily life sinks 
 deeper than maxims ; but we are apt to forget 
 it, especially when the little children are our 
 only observers. We agree with Carlyle that 
 what we are is more than what we say; and 
 then we live according to our inclinations, and 
 hope to see the children do better than we do 
 because we advise them well. Truly, there is 
 need, in many quarters, of less good talk and 
 more right action. 
 
 If teachers need harmony in all their rela- 
 tions with associates and subordinates in order 
 to make their work effectual, how much more 
 the mother needs to live in an atmosphere of
 
 FINGEK SONGS. 47 
 
 charity in every branch of the home life ! Bet- 
 ter that she should suffer an indignity, a cruel 
 wound to her self-respect, the word that cuts 
 like a sword, or exasperates like a pin-prick 
 better to suffer all these in dignified self-repres- 
 sion than that a little child should catch a note 
 of discord in the home life. A mother must be 
 to her mother what she would have her child be 
 to her. 
 
 A poor woman went one day to the kinder- 
 garten, where she heard her little girl singing, 
 " This is the mother good and dear," with lov- 
 ing glances at the tiny thumb, which became to 
 her, for the moment, the ideal mother ; and the 
 woman, overcome with self-reproaches, left the 
 room in tears. The teacher, following her to 
 offer sympathy in any case of home trouble, was 
 surprised at the hurried and sobbing confession : 
 " I am not a good mother ; oh, I am not a good 
 mother, and my little girl knows I am not ! 
 What shall I do?" It is hardly necessary to 
 tell that the self-accused mother became the self- 
 reforming woman, and another family is strug- 
 gling to make the home what it should be.
 
 48 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 Introducing the child to the outer world by 
 means of finger plays is also wise. Holding the 
 left hand up with the closed right hand covered 
 by it, one may sing, as the fingers of the left 
 hand spring erect : 
 
 "My pigeon house I open wide, 
 
 And set all the happy pigeons free. 
 They fly o'er the fields on every side, 
 
 And light on the tallest tree. 
 But when they return from their merry flight, 
 We'll shut the door and say good-night. 
 
 Coo-roo, coo-roo, coo-roo, coo-roo, 
 
 Coo-roo, coo-roo, coo-roo, coo-roo." 
 
 The fingers of the right hand nutter about, and 
 lightly rest on the head, as on a tree, returning 
 to the pigeon house as indicated by the words. 
 Another valuable finger song is this : 
 
 "See the fishes in the brook, 
 Sinking, rising look, look, look! 
 Now they are straight and now they bend, 
 Their merry playing has no end. 
 See how within the shallow stream 
 The merry little fishes gleam. 
 See how they dart along the ground, 
 Chasing each other around and round, 
 Chasing each other around and round."
 
 FINGER SONGS. 49 
 
 In this the words themselves describe the 
 motions. A very effective story can be made 
 from the material of these songs. The birds 
 invite the fishes to coine up to their nests, but 
 the fishes decline because they cannot fly ; but 
 as the birds can walk, they are asked to come 
 down to the bottom of the brook, but they can- 
 not do that, as they are made to live in the air ; 
 and after a happy hour of chatter and grateful 
 comparison of mutual advantages, birds and 
 fishes agree that air is good for wings, fins for 
 water, and the little boy who hears the dialogue 
 rejoices that he lives in home love, and needs 
 neither wings nor fins. 
 
 Through these and like songs I helped a 
 feeble-minded child of six years to her first 
 observation of her fingers, which was soon fol- 
 lowed by an attempt to use the thumb and fore- 
 finger in conjunction. 
 
 With the most scrupulous care on the part of 
 the most conscientious mother, it often happens 
 that very young children acquire dangerous 
 habits of the hands. Vicious tendencies, quite 
 improbable if not impossible, are often ascribed
 
 50 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 to the child, and remedies almost as hurtful as 
 the disorder are sometimes used. These games 
 are found admirable in the correction of such 
 habits; the child that sucks its thumb refusing 
 herself that luxury when the thumb is put to 
 sleep with the song given above. 
 
 The imagination of the child is healthfully 
 stimulated by these games, and through his 
 imagination his will may be strengthened in 
 right directions for we are learning that self- 
 will and self-direction are good for the child.
 
 V. 
 
 SONGS AND GAMES FOR THE CULTIVATION OF 
 
 THE SENSES: THEIR RIGHT USE AND 
 
 THEIR DANGERS. 
 
 May you give bread to men ; but my aim shall be to give 
 men to themselves. FROEBEL. 
 
 CERTAIN fruits and grains deteriorate if left to 
 nature, and many a weed -becomes a lovely plant 
 by the slow processes of cultivation. Preyer 
 says that before a sure sign of will, of memory, 
 judgment, inference in the proper sense, is found, 
 the feelings have expressed themselves in direct 
 connection with the first excitations of the 
 nerves of sense. Carpenter's " Mental Physi- 
 ology" treats the senses with a dignity which 
 deepens the impressiveness of the Biblical asser- 
 tion that our bodies are the temples of the liv- 
 ing God. 
 
 In past times, and in isolated cases of our 
 own day, man, feeling his way Godward, found, 
 
 51
 
 52 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 as he thought, a hindrance in the senses ; to 
 crucify the flesh was therefore thought not only 
 an act of devotion, but a means of spiritual 
 growth, and the words of Agassiz, "A physical 
 fact is as sacred as a moral principle," could 
 hardly have been written by a man in the six- 
 teenth century. A late writer on the problem 
 of evil says : " As the senses are the necessary 
 feeders of the intellect, so the appetites are the 
 necessary nourishers of our highest moral sen- 
 timents. And yet the struggle for mastery 
 of the higher spiritual with the lower animal is 
 often so severe that the latter seems to many 
 an essential evil to be extirpated, instead of a 
 useful servant to be controlled. 
 
 All that we call evil, both in the material 
 and the spiritual world, is good so long as we 
 hold it in subjection as servants to the spirit, 
 and only becomes evil when we succumb. All 
 evil consists in the dominance of the lower over 
 the higher ; all good in the rational use of the 
 lower by the higher. It is only by action and 
 reaction of all parts of our complex nature that 
 true virtue is attained." With this view of the
 
 SONGS AND GAMES. 53 
 
 senses and appetites we may well advocate culti- 
 vation, which involves the use of the harrow and 
 pruning-knife as well as good seed. 
 
 The first evil that threatens the baby is glut- 
 tony. Nature left to herself is an unsafe guide ; 
 first sensations of discomfort are allayed by feed- 
 ing, and the child would apply this sovereign 
 remedy for all ailments and discomforts. Some- 
 times the mother uses as little judgment as the 
 child, and relief for an over-full stomach is 
 sought in more feeding, with a ridiculous appli- 
 cation of " similia similibus curantur" Children 
 of but three years of age are sometimes little 
 gormands, whose best correction might be found 
 in the careful use of Froebel's Taste Songs. 
 Through these the child may be led to classifi- 
 cation of edibles into nuts, fruits, vegetables, etc. 
 Talk about the processes of growth or manu- 
 facture will prevent the game from deteriorating 
 into mere eating. 
 
 A hasty glance even, into an encyclopedia 
 will furnish the basis for fascinating stories of a 
 lump of sugar, history of an orange, adventures 
 of a cocoanut ; and the child may soon be led to
 
 54 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 telling the story of the material tasted, and will 
 naturally forget the grosser side of eating in 
 such investigation of the processes of nature and 
 art in the production of his food. 
 
 Smell, that more delicate sense so closely 
 allied to taste, may also be utilized in classifi- 
 cation and the educational value of classifica- 
 tion is well known. 
 
 In tasting, we destroy the form of that upon 
 which we act ; but we enjoy the smell of the 
 rose, and the rose is not destroyed, though it is 
 by a process of dissolution that the flower gives 
 up its odor : an early interest in botany may be 
 awakened by this game. The sense of smell is 
 claimed by some to be more closely related to 
 the spiritual life than the other senses ; we are 
 perhaps too forgetful of the ministrations to a 
 higher life which this refined sense affords. By 
 the law of association the sweet-brier that per- 
 fumed our playroom when we were children, or 
 the favorite flower of some departed friend, 
 becomes a power in our lives. The locust blos- 
 som, the wild violet, the golden-rod, by their 
 fragrance may recall a hallowed hour or place.
 
 SONGS AND GAMES. 55 
 
 Perhaps not one reader of this but will hav^ her 
 own tender thoughts in this connection, thoughts 
 which lift her heavenward not only in feeling, 
 but control many an action of her life, for which 
 she is debtor to the subtle sense of smell. 
 
 The child with covered eyes guesses the name 
 of a flower by its distinctive odor, and led by 
 the song takes care of the flower which has 
 ministered to his pleasure, instead of casting it 
 aside to wither and fade when his enjoyment of 
 it has passed. 
 
 That the sense of touch may also tell us the 
 names of objects and persons may be taught by 
 blindfolding the child while his hands discover 
 the secret. A very nice sense of touch may 
 thus be acquired. 
 
 For the cultivation of the ear a charming 
 game is provided. A child stands in the middle 
 of the room blindfolded, while others march 
 around him, singing. At the tap of a stick a 
 child steps behind the guesser, singing alone a 
 part of the song, and the blindfolded one 
 guesses from the voice wjia it is. Children 
 become marvellously quick in recognizing tones
 
 56 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 in t^is way, and any kindergarten where this 
 game has been played a few months will put to 
 the blush the same number of older people who 
 wish to try it, unless they have had similar 
 training. There are some popular games of this 
 nature played by young girls that are vulgar in 
 the extreme. I saw not long since, at a chil- 
 dren's party, a game involving the same princi- 
 ple, but worked out in a coarse manner. There 
 was no singing, but the girl designated grunted 
 in a swinish manner, her name being guessed 
 by this vocal expression. The girls very readily 
 accepted the suggestion of a prettier way of 
 playing the same game another proof of the 
 ease with which the games as well as the 
 studies of children may be directed by a sym- 
 pathetic older person. 
 
 For the very little ones, who find the above 
 game too complicated, the simple call of 
 " cuckoo ! cuckoo ! cuckoo ! " may be substi- 
 tuted, the blindfolded child directing its steps 
 toward the sound ; even the handkerchief may 
 be omitted for the toddler, the singer secreting 
 herself behind a door or armchair.
 
 SONGS AND GAMES. 57 
 
 There is a theory, not yet fully tested, that a 
 disorder of the ear exists, corresponding to 
 color-blindness, or possibly to near-sightedness. 
 My own investigations in the public schools of 
 Boston under the direction of an eminent aurist, 
 Dr. Clarence Blake, certainly prove the existence 
 of a disorder of the ear, but its exact nature is 
 not yet known. 
 
 If the disorder is curable, such training of the 
 ear as these games involve must be of great 
 value. 
 
 Perhaps it is not generally known that a child v 
 learns to see by a slow process, as he learns to 
 walk. Some parents and teachers attribute the 
 incorrect estimates of things seen to lack of nudg- 
 
 o j o 
 
 ment, but it is no doubt true that for a long 
 period the child sees but dimly, or only in out- 
 lines ; this would partially explain his keen 
 enjoyment of crude drawings. A child once 
 drew a mouse for me with one stroke of his pen- 
 cil and a dot ; the long curved line represented 
 the tail, and the dot the eye of the mouse, and 
 he was perfectly satisfied with his representation 
 of what he had seen.
 
 58 THE STUDY OF CHILDKEN. 
 
 Recognition of various qualities and objects 
 by sight is a game which may be made of great 
 physical and intellectual value. A small num- 
 ber of objects, the number to be increased as the 
 child's ability improves, may be placed in a bas- 
 ket covered with a napkin ; give the child a 
 peep under the napkin, and then ask him what 
 he has seen. Memory and language must now 
 be brought into requisition, and in this simple 
 play, sensation, perception, memory, language, 
 and will are involved. The complexity of the 
 game may be increased as the child is able, by 
 adding to the objects their number, color, form, 
 and material. 
 
 The same purpose may be accomplished by 
 varying the game, holding the objects in the 
 hand, or making pictures on a board, removing 
 a screen for a moment's observation. Another 
 excellent aid to sight recognition is found in 
 timing a child at a window, giving him five 
 minutes for seeing as many things as he can in 
 the time allotted ; he may name them as he sees 
 them at first, but he will soon enjoy the memory 
 game connected with it.
 
 SONGS AND GAMES. 59 
 
 A child whose senses are thus cultivated is in 
 small danger of thinking too much about him- 
 self, for he is drawn to observation of the world 
 outside and to an appreciative interest in the 
 processes of nature and the wonders of man's 
 mechanical skill, and if he does not look rever- 
 ently from created things toward the Creator, it 
 will be because he is turned aside by those who 
 are guiding him. 
 
 Observation and transcription of intellectual 
 development through cultivation of the senses 
 is much needed.
 
 VI. 
 
 NATURAL PHENOMENA DELATED TO THE 
 SPIRITUAL LIFE OF THE CHILD. 
 
 Children marvel at the phenomena of nature, while grown 
 people often think themselves too wise to wonder. ALEX. 
 BRAUN. 
 
 SOME years since, under the direction of Dr. 
 G. Stanley Hall, I made some studies of the no- 
 tions of little children concerning natural phe- 
 nomena. Their ideas were a revelation to me. 
 They thought the sky was made of bricks, that 
 it was wall-paper, that it was the floor of heaven. 
 I found an attenuated, half-dressed little boy of, 
 five years at the North End rn Boston, whose 
 face glowed with eager anticipation when he 
 told me that he expected to help God make 
 thunder when he should get to heaven ; and on f 
 being questioned how it was done, he answered 
 that they kicked balls around there. Some chil- 
 dren thought the thunder was God hammering 
 
 60
 
 NATUKAL PHENOMENA. 61 
 
 out other worlds. Note the likeness between 
 this conception of noisy creative activity and 
 the ancient ideas of Vulcan and the Norse beliefs 
 concerning Loki and his occupations. Their 
 thoughts about lightning showed the same vari- 
 ations, according to the child's individuality and 
 environment : to one it was " God pointing his 
 finger at me " ; to another it was God opening 
 the door of heaven to look out. To some chil- 
 dren the clouds were lace curtains between us 
 and heaven. Is there anything more graceful 
 than that in the Greek mythology ? A child of 
 four years, being asked one rainy day where the 
 rain came from, answered, as if it had been long 
 settled in his mind, that the ice-carts up there 
 were leaking. 
 
 Country children have superior advantages in 
 their nearness to earth and sky, but no lovelier 
 conception could be found in a child's mind than 
 that of a boy at the North End, who had never 
 seen the Common or Garden, and lived at the 
 top of one of the crowded tenements in that 
 dreary region. He said, with radiant though 
 dirty face, that there were many diamonds in
 
 62 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 heaven, and he should have some to play with 
 when he got there ; on being questioned as to 
 where he had ever seen any diamonds, he an- 
 swered, " In a window on Tremont Row, and on 
 a patch of grass in Miss Maloney's yard, some- 
 times real early in the morning ! " Rain nearly 
 always represented to these children some activ- 
 ity of God. He was sprinkling his garden, 
 upsetting buckets, turning the faucets, etc. 
 
 The sun, moon, and stars were usually personi- 
 fied ; some thought them bright beings men, 
 women, or angels that walk, fly, or run in heaven 
 or in the sky, God holding them by the hand or 
 they would fall. A child whose feet were stained 
 with blue stockings told his mother some of the 
 sky must have fallen down and he had stepped 
 in it. Like the ancient Greek, the child projects 
 his life and his love into the starry firmament. 
 It is a subject for grave thought that to the little 
 child the heavens and the earth are a unit, and 
 that unit includes the law of love love typified 
 by the family relations. If we could remember 
 that " the spirit of God moves upon the child's 
 spirit as the ocean sways the seaweed," then we
 
 NATURAL PPIENOMENA. 63 
 
 should begin the lesson indicated by the Master 
 when he placed the child in the midst of the 
 bickering crowd and bade the disciples to con- 
 sider it. 
 
 Let us examine the symbolism in which the 
 child lives. We express ourselves through sym- 
 bols, our thoughts often refusing the small- 
 clothes of words that do not have sufficiently 
 expansive meanings. We do not reach an intel- 
 lectual plane where we lay aside symbols; the 
 most exact scientists are forced to use them, the 
 language of chemistry even being a language of 
 poetry when we put it word by word to a critical 
 test. Tyndall, in his " Scientific Uses of the 
 Imagination," warmly defends the groundwork 
 of symbolism. If we of maturer years are so 
 dependent upon symbols, both in intellectual and 
 spiritual growth, shall we not look for a like, 
 and even greater, need in the undeveloped life 
 of the child ? 
 
 The child sees men and women, fathers, moth- 
 ers, and children, in the stars ; they are there by 
 comparison. Out of comparison the child ar- 
 rives at abstraction, and from abstraction the
 
 64 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 child grasps the Infinite. He does not study his 
 process of growth all healthy growth is per- 
 haps unconscious; but the family lives in and 
 by love ; love is the element in which the stars 
 exist. Mother-love leads to God-love, and the 
 child climbs from his mother's arms beyond the 
 stars, finally reaching the abstract knowledge 
 that only that which is a reflection of God will 
 abide eternally, and that which reflects spirit is 
 spirit. There is a significance in the child's de- 
 sire to reach the stars which we would better 
 gravely consider than to laugh at, either thought- 
 lessly or contemptuously. The soul that holds 
 its aspirations in spite of all temporary and tem- 
 poral hindrances will as assuredly find its way 
 back to God as the stars move in their appointed 
 ways. 
 
 The material world we believe to be a mani- 
 festation of the Creative Thought, and as we 
 study the material world we are impressed with 
 the many-sided glimpses of that Creative 
 Power which it affords us. We climb toward 
 God's thought on stepping-stones of material 
 things, up, up among the forces which seem
 
 NATURAL PHENOMENA. 65 
 
 nearer and nearer the spiritual, until we find 
 ourselves in the light which reveals Him to our 
 spirits, and nothing in His created world is ever 
 again common or unclean. 
 
 The delight of the baby in glancing sunbeams 
 has a cause as sure and universal as the delight. 
 The child that will shudder and cry at sight of 
 shadows on the wall will clap its hands and 
 laugh when the prism sends its rainbow colors 
 dancing through the room. Light has ever been 
 a symbol of good. In the Norse mythology the 
 gods dwelt in the light of Asgard, while the 
 dwarfs worked in dark caves. In their best 
 moments men have ever turned to the contem- 
 plation or worship of light. It has been the 
 god of the child of the race. The Hebrews 
 kept the sacred shekinah burning upon their 
 altars day and night. It might be thought that 
 science would rob the light of its spiritual sig- 
 nificance ; but so much stronger are spiritual 
 meanings than we can comprehend, that an 
 essay of Tyndall's upon sun rays lifts one 
 from the contemplation of natural forces to 
 spontaneous worship of the Source of truth 
 and life.
 
 66 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 Scientists, like the prophets of old, speak with 
 deeper meaning than they know. Thoughts 
 concerning the light, from Milton, from Goethe, 
 from Dante, flutter about us like birds, and we 
 feel that man would have found God by the 
 single ladder of light had he been left with no 
 other revelation ; but revelation addressed to 
 the feeling which underlies knowledge gives us 
 the < sense of unity without and within, above 
 and below, as we listen to its voice, " I am the 
 light," Walk in the light." 
 
 Froebel's song of the Light-bird, and of the 
 moon and stars, will help the mother to feel the 
 divine fire in her own heart which seeks all its 
 dark places with its illuminating power, burn- 
 ing out unworthy aims, causing her to avoid 
 secrecy, and to cultivate truthfulness not only 
 of speech but of action in all her relations 
 with her child, whereby they w r ill tread upon 
 the adder of evil, and together hasten the 
 coming of the day which shall need no light 
 of sun, moon, or stars, for God will give the 
 light.
 
 VII. 
 THE DULL CHILD THE WISE MAN'S PROBLEM. 
 
 I know so much I hardly know myself. FIVE-YEAR-OLD 
 EOT. 
 
 WE may watch the dawn of thought in a 
 young child and learn lessons which are hidden 
 from us in the larger volume of the mature 
 mind. In its unconsciousness of the possession 
 of mental faculties it presents to the philosopher 
 unequalled advantages for study. A retentive 
 memory does not make a bright child ; I have 
 seen a case of unimprovable feebleness of mind 
 where dates were so retained in the memory 
 that the child was a prodigy studied by univer- 
 sity men. Quickness in computation is not an 
 indication of brightness of intellect; abnormal 
 ability in this direction may exist in a mind 
 quite incapable of effort in other directions. 
 Speeches that are usually accepted as indications 
 of acuteness in children will not often bear the 
 
 67
 
 68 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 test of candid analysis. A boy of five years 
 begged for a sister, and was told to wait until 
 babies were cheaper ; he had a ticket for an en- 
 tertainment on which he found the usual " chil- 
 dren for half price," and ran to his mother to 
 demand the promised sister, as they were now 
 selling children at half price. We laugh at this 
 as if the child were consciously witty, but the 
 statement was, to his mind, as free from humor, 
 and his acceptance of it as serious, as in scores 
 of cases in which he would have been rebuked 
 for lack of common sense. We know that 
 children do not see the occasion for laughter 
 in half the things we account funny. We are 
 sometimes as cruel in our merriment as at others 
 we are unjust in our blame. 
 
 A degree of absent-mindedness sometimes 
 accompanies a depth of thought which is quite 
 precocious ; we must religiously guard our ex- 
 pressions of blame in the presence of these 
 children. 
 
 On the street my attention was once drawn 
 to a knot of boys ten or twelve years old, one of 
 whom proved to possess remarkable mechanical
 
 THE DULL CHILD. 69 
 
 skill. Having a paper that admitted me to any 
 school in the city for purposes of investigation, 
 I went to his department to study the case. 
 His teacher asked how I happened to select him 
 from among others in her room, as she was not 
 aware that he had any especial ability. The 
 particulars of his development were referred to 
 Dr. G. Stanley Hall, who said some memorable 
 words that should be written upon the walls of 
 every schoolroom : " Tread softly here ; you 
 may be in the presence of genius." The point 
 to be noted is, that a boy of unmistakable indi- 
 viduality, and of such peculiarity as to draw 
 from a philosopher a remark like that, was, in 
 the eyes of his teacher, quite an average boy. 
 The teacher might have looked daily into the 
 mysteries of this mind but for the stultifying 
 pressure of grade work too commonly forced 
 upon teachers. In our studies in primary 
 schools we found that the children accounted 
 bright were those who were quick in number 
 lessons. The children accounted dull were those 
 who were shy and slow of speech ; but these 
 were they who held those beautiful notions of
 
 70 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 the heavenly bodies, and those airy imaginings 
 about the clouds ; children who were uncom- 
 municative without being sullen, who thought 
 their own thoughts, losing their way in " tables " 
 because they were wandering in a region where 
 it made no difference whether two and two make 
 four or five. 
 
 A child of abnormal mentality was placed in 
 my kindergarten at the age of three ; she would 
 not look at other children, did not notice music 
 nor take the brightest toy in her hands, and 
 showed no pleasure even in sweet tastes. She 
 found amusement in tearing her aprons from 
 hem to neck, but would take no substitute of 
 old calico, and showed no gleam of satisfaction 
 when she found a thin place for a starting-point ; 
 she even did this in a listless fashion, and not 
 as a regular occupation. After some months of 
 this stupor she accepted a box of beads, looked 
 at bright balls and sometimes at the children 
 when their movements were uncommonly rapid ; 
 at the end of a year she would walk if urged 
 and supported by both hands. In the second 
 year she developed some skill with her fingers
 
 THE DULL CHILD. 
 
 and much interest in the games, but she was 
 subject to violent outbursts of temper, the causes 
 of which could seldom be discovered. She was 
 spiteful toward children and teachers alike, and 
 after a passionate outbreak was not sunny, but 
 unusually quiet, the rousing of mental activity 
 seeming to culminate in a burst of wrath, during 
 which she would scratch and bite, and then sub- 
 side into quiet which was due to exhaustion 
 rather than to penitence. This stage of devel- 
 opment lasted six months or more, and one day 
 the teachers looked at each other in surprise, 
 one inquiring, " When has J. been in one of her 
 tempers ? " The day could not be recalled ; the 
 days of wrath had passed away and a new era 
 dawned. J. became the most trusted care-taker 
 of the little ones ; she never tired of helping the 
 smallest children with wraps and rubbers, and 
 would walk half a mile to restore a veil to some 
 careless child ; her remarks were quaint and full 
 of humor, and she became to us a most com- 
 panionable child. She brought her doll daily, 
 taking beautiful care of it and its clothes. She 
 was retained three years in the kindergarten,
 
 72 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 and in the last year she was untiring in her 
 efforts to master both ideas and things. She is 
 now in grammar school, among the first in her 
 class, slow to grasp but sure to hold ideas, and 
 has shown marked musical ability ; her hands, 
 so slow in skill, are remarkably beautiful, com- 
 bining strength with flexibility. She has ex- 
 celled pupils of her age in piano-forte lessons, 
 her teacher telling me she is an uncommonly prom- 
 ising pupil. I was often assured that she was 
 an idiot when she first came to the kinder- 
 garten. 
 
 But there are dull children ? Doubtless ; but 
 the most hopelessly dull are the scatter-brained 
 ones who catch and toss words, and facts even, 
 from tongue-tips without turning them over in 
 their own minds. 
 
 But it is the feeble-minded children that I 
 wish to commend to your thoughtful consider- 
 ation ; and let us acknowledge our indebtedness 
 to these unfortunate children, who furnish us 
 with laws of mental development in large type. 
 The normal processes of mind are so rapid that 
 study of them is somewhat impeded, but the ab-
 
 THE DULL CHILD. 73 
 
 normally slow mind gives us invaluable aid. To 
 study the mechanism of a locomotive one must 
 see it at rest, or when running at slackened 
 speed. Men go to insane asylums to learn about 
 aberrations of mind, and measure the healthy 
 brain by the peculiarities of the diseased one. 
 
 If the feeble-minded children had no moral 
 claim upon us, it would be to our advantage to 
 educate them in connection with our normal 
 schools. Massachusetts, New York, and Wis- 
 consin educate as citizens a large class of chil- 
 dren that Michigan supports as paupers. Many 
 children go through life hopelessly idiotic be- 
 cause there is a small tumor of the inner ear 
 which presses upon the brain, interfering with 
 its action ; children have been restored to nor- 
 mal mental conditions by the removal of such 
 growths. Others of peculiar mental constitu- 
 tion find in schools for the feeble-minded such 
 training as no public school can give, and are 
 saved from degradation and pauperism by the 
 State, which does only her duty in caring alike 
 for all her children ; for the State should afford 
 schools for all minors or for none.
 
 74 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 But this series of papers will have failed of 
 its main purpose if mothers are not stimulated 
 to a systematic study of children. A mother 
 may observe and transcribe the dominant feel- 
 ings and their means of expression in the young- 
 est baby ; ten minutes of such observation daily 
 will open her eyes to the development of habit, 
 and she will find herself observing the awaken- 
 ing of thought and the dawning of will with an 
 understanding sharpened* by these studies. An 
 occasional review of her record may flash light 
 upon something otherwise misunderstood in the 
 character of her child. 
 
 Men of science are indefatigable in their scru- 
 tiny of nature ; no man would trust his memory 
 alone for any account of the daily changes in a 
 chrysalis as observed under the microscope. 
 But we let these developing minds, with all the 
 complexity of influences about and within them, 
 pass from stage to stage of growth, making no 
 note upon the processes. It is not items for the 
 funny columns of newspapers that we beg you to 
 collect it is history we need, and no one needs 
 it so much as the mother herself. The record
 
 THE DULL CHILD. 75 
 
 of everything done by a child in one day, in the 
 order of doing, would be a revelation to the in- 
 experienced observer. Richter has well said 
 that a diary about an ordinary child would be 
 more valuable than many books about children 
 by an ordinary writer.
 
 CHILDREN'S HABITS. 
 
 Habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious 
 conservative agent. PROFESSOR JAMES. 
 
 PARENTS are often responsible for a critical 
 and unkind attitude of mind on the part of 
 their children towards associates. They culti- 
 vate it in them by constant attention to bad 
 habits, forgetting that the gpod habits are to 
 the bad as the sands of the sea compared with 
 its shells. 
 
 For convenience, we will consider children's 
 habits, as physical, mental, and moral. 
 
 Prevention is better than cure, in habits as 
 well as in sickness. A kindergartner has 
 mainly to consider those which have begun in 
 peculiarities or accidents, and with wise treat- 
 ment prevent their becoming fixed. 
 
 Singularity of gesture, or freak of facial 
 
 76
 
 CHILDREN S HABITS. 77 
 
 expression, should be promptly treated with- 
 out attracting the attention of the child to its 
 difficulty, and in a playful manner, without 
 speaking of the object in view. The turning 
 in of toes, shrugging of shoulders, hanging of 
 the head, even sucking of the thumb, may be 
 corrected before the muscles are so contracted 
 as to render the change of action difficult. If 
 the child is shy, and these gestures arise from 
 an over-consciousness of hands and feet, draw 
 his attention to external objects by your own 
 interested observation of them, encouraging him 
 to imitate animals and their motions. The 
 child who plays he is a restive colt, tossing his 
 head and prancing in his harness, gets valuable 
 aid in the proper carriage of his own body. 
 
 Keep in mind, however, the safeguard of a 
 new interest to prevent repetition of the mus- 
 cular movement. 
 
 When a bad habit is formed, even one which 
 has pre-natal excuse for its existence, it can be 
 corrected by gentle, continued watchfulness. 
 
 A little girl of four years had a well-fixed 
 habit of sucking her thumb, which was cor-
 
 78 CHILDREN'S HABITS. 
 
 rected by occupying the little hands in bead- 
 stringing, sticking shoe-pegs, etc. When the 
 trial of bedtime arrived, the thumb was called 
 the sleepy baby, and was playfully rocked in 
 the crib of nurse's palm until the little mother 
 slept, the hand being gently confined with a 
 handkerchief during sleep, to prevent the un- 
 conscious action. 
 
 A child of three years entered the kinder- 
 garten with a habit of crying. The mother 
 was visited, and questioned about causes, but 
 could give none. The child had cried ever 
 since her birth. " Did you cry much before the 
 child was born?" "Cry! I cried six months, 
 miss, hardly stopping to eat or sleep." The 
 poor, uneducated, overworked mother was as- 
 tonished to learn that her distress of mind had 
 probably affected her child, and she was ready 
 to help in undoing the injury. 
 
 Whenever the child began to cry, a fresh 
 flower, a box of beads to string, a proposed 
 walk, or some such pleasant surprise, involving a 
 change of interest and occupation, was instantly 
 proposed, nothing being said about the tears.
 
 CHILDREN'S HABITS. 79 
 
 A few weeks of this treatment produced a 
 marked change, and at five years of age the 
 child entered public school with no more ten- 
 dency to "cry for nothing " than other children, 
 having apparently forgotten her unfortunate 
 habit. The parents had been requested not to 
 rebuke her, or refer to it. 
 
 Another child, with a like affliction, scolded, 
 taunted, and ridiculed at home and at school, 
 grew out of childhood before outgrowing the 
 difficulty, and bore into womanhood a face dis- 
 figured with passionate weeping, which had 
 been aggravated by the cruelty of unthinking 
 associates. 
 
 A child entered the kindergarten with a 
 habit of trotting both feet upon the floor, the 
 strained and intense expression of her face 
 meanwhile being painful to see. The mother 
 told a pitiful story of running a sewing-machine 
 twelve and fourteen hours a day before her 
 birth, the wolf at the door having been just 
 let loose by the protracted illness of the father 
 of the child. The mother had coaxed and 
 scolded the little one by turns, not knowing any
 
 80 CHILDREN'S HABITS. 
 
 other method of treatment ; but she joyfully 
 co-operated with me in another way. When 
 the trotting began, sometimes a low cricket was 
 placed under the weary little feet, which pre- 
 vented the action as long as the position was 
 comfortable, the removal of the cricket proving 
 another surprise and diversion. Sometimes the 
 child was asked to bring a box or slate, just 
 as she assumed the posture, the facial expres- 
 sion telling beforehand when it might be ex- 
 pected. This child became very expert in the 
 imitation of birds, probably because given a 
 large share in these exercises, with a view to 
 developing the muscles in an opposite direction 
 from that to which they were predisposed. At 
 the end of the year the trouble was only noticed 
 at times of unusual excitement or weariness, 
 and at the age of six years the pained expres- 
 sion of the face and the tendency to trot ap- 
 peared to be overcome. 
 
 One delicate case may be cited in a family of 
 different station. A little boy contracted a habit 
 considered vicious and immoral by the mother, 
 the father looking at it entirely from the physi-
 
 CHILDREN'S HABITS. 81 
 
 cal standpoint. It was wisely agreed that each, 
 apply a remedy. The mother attacked the 
 moral fortress with prayers and precepts. The 
 father (a physician, by the way) believed with 
 Agassiz that a physical fact is as sacred as a 
 moral principle, and conscientiously pursued his 
 method. The boy was ambitious to grow to 
 papa's stature, as what boy is not ? He was 
 also ambitious to do all his height and strength 
 would permit in the care of the family horse, 
 and the occasion for the first rebuke was chosen 
 when the boy was helping to harness him. " I 
 am sorry my son will never be tall enough to 
 put on the head-stall, nor strong enough to 
 drive the horse alone." 
 
 " Why, papa, I am going to be as tall and as 
 strong as you ! " 
 
 " No, my son, you will soon stop growing, I 
 fear ; you will be a weak, useless, dwarfed man, 
 unless you break yourself of a bad habit which 
 papa cannot break for you ; your iiands will 
 grow weak and trembling before you have 
 begun a man's work." 
 
 It is needless to say that the horse stood
 
 82 CHILDREN'S HABITS. 
 
 unharnessed, and the boy was in his father's 
 arms at the first grave sentence, and a sacred 
 confidence was forever established between them. 
 The hearty, well-meant promise, " never, never 
 to do it again," was checked by the father, who 
 would rather have a promise covering a speci- 
 fied time and briefer than one of so much 
 indefiniteness as " never, never." A daily con- 
 fession, based upon perfect truth on the part of 
 the child and patience on the part of the father, 
 with mutual determination to conquer the evil, 
 was agreed upon. It was not long before the 
 time was lengthened between confidences, as 
 the child's strength of will grew. Aids of cold 
 bathing, diet, and exercise were added to the 
 moral support of the mother and the desired 
 result was at last obtained. 
 
 Turning from physical to mental habits, not 
 imagining that we can actually draw dividing 
 lines, we yet feel ourselves upon more delicate 
 ground, and offer opinions and suggestions with 
 much trepidation. 
 
 Long observation of children, and study of 
 mental physiology and philosophy, leads to one
 
 CHILDREN'S HABITS. 83 
 
 
 
 conviction : That mental habits receive a strong 
 bias before the thought of mental training has 
 entered the mind of the average mother. Leav- 
 ing out the question of heredity, good mental 
 habits find their beginnings in the unconscious, 
 undivided attention of the child to objects which 
 interest it. The child should be a long way up 
 the " hill of science " before he is able of his 
 own conscious will to fix his mind upon one 
 object to the exclusion of another. There seems 
 little danger in allowing an infant to ponder 
 subjects which present themselves with suffi- 
 cient vividness to hold his attention, but much 
 danger in attempting to force his attention to 
 our abstract theories and jargon in a language 
 yet unknown to him. 
 
 We often cruelly bewilder the child in its 
 search after knowledge ; our merriment at 
 Baby's blunders, in language alone, often places 
 a difficulty in the child's path which he will 
 not surmount in years. Who has not seen the 
 " rattle-brained " child whose attention is diffi- 
 cult to hold upon either work or play? and
 
 84 CHILDHKN'S HABITS. 
 
 
 
 who shall say how much the rattle-box may 
 have to do with that condition of the mind ? 
 
 More than two thousand years ago Plato 
 wrote : " Changes of toys should not be made 
 too rapidly, for fear of developing instability of 
 character." Is it not time to heed the caution 
 of the divine philosopher ? 
 
 Can we picture to ourselves what our state of 
 mind would be, could we be placed upon another 
 planet, with laws of nature quite new to us, the 
 language unknown, and we deprived of power of 
 escape from some grinning, gibbering giant who 
 should consider it his duty to incessantly amuse 
 us with a drum or a rattle, refusing us a 
 moment's leisure to contemplate objects which 
 interest us ; treating our blunders with hilarity, 
 in short, doing by us as we do by our babe ! 
 "Would we be likely to distinguish ourselves in 
 wisdom or patience under such treatment ? 
 
 Cultivating thought, even the crude thinking 
 of infancy, is a help to language ; when we have 
 done what we can to let the child use its powers 
 of observation, and it desires to express its 
 thoughts in words, we should help it to correct
 
 CHILDREN'S HABITS. 85 
 
 expressions, remembering how lasting are the 
 habits of incorrect speech. 
 
 A college graduate, a man of considerable abil- 
 ity, says, " I will rise the window," having 
 used the wrong form of the verb in childhood 
 and being entirely unable to speak correctly 
 whenever a thought urges him to spontaneous 
 utterance. 
 
 We should not fret the child by constant 
 rebukes ; in language it is usually sufficient if 
 we take care of our example. Children correct 
 their language more effectually than we can 
 correct it if we use a wise discretion. 
 
 In considering children's moral habits let us 
 keep in mind the greatest principle of education, 
 which was taught by Aristotle, good actions 
 produce good habits. In forming a judgment 
 of the child's action we need carefully to distin- 
 guish between the act and the motive which 
 prompted it. More carefully than we guard the 
 child we must guard ourselves in correcting him, 
 lest some unworthy motive, concerning appear- 
 ances merely, or personal convenience, shall in- 
 fluence our conduct. We are largely responsible
 
 86 CHILDREN'S HABITS. 
 
 if there is confusion of right and wrong in the 
 mind of the child. Disapproval, even punish- 
 ment, concerning accidents is sometimes more 
 severe than for an act of selfishness, and selfish- 
 ness seems sometimes the only immorality of 
 childhood about which we can approximate a 
 correct judgment. That which we think lying 
 is often confusion of mind concerning relations 
 of number or size about which the child lacks 
 judgment. 
 
 A dream may be as vivid as a reality to 
 the child mind. Two little girls met me one 
 morning with astonishment, one exclaiming, " I 
 thought you was dead ! Wasn't you dead ? 
 I told sister you was ! " I was led into an 
 alley and shown a hole in the ground, in which 
 those children thought I had been buried, one 
 by supposed ocular demonstration, the other by 
 received testimony. How easily they might 
 have been proven guilty of lying to the satis- 
 faction of a careless observer ! 
 
 It is wrong to accuse of theft before a child 
 can be expected to understand anything of 
 property rights. A comparatively safe basis of
 
 CHILDREN'S HABITS. 87 
 
 judgment may rest upon the secretiveness or 
 non-secretiveness of the mind. To prevent a 
 habit of misappropriation, the child should be 
 kindly taken to the rightful owner of the object 
 so appropriated, and gently obliged to restore 
 the article, never permitting the mistaken kind- 
 ness of allowing him to keep the article because 
 the owner is generous or indifferent. 
 
 Assume that the child has made a mistake 
 which he is willing to rectify, not that he is a 
 hardened breaker of commandments. 
 
 Moral lectures separated from immediate 
 wrong doing seem of little benefit. " Train up 
 a child in the way he should go" cannot be 
 wrenched into meaning that we should encour- 
 age our children to be mere theorizers upon 
 moral subjects ; hearers, not doers, of the word. 
 There are abundant opportunities to begin the 
 training of a child in right doing before he can 
 understand abstract rules of action. An amus- 
 ing anecdote of mis-applied effort may not be 
 amiss. A little child, a mere babe, was sent 
 to Sunday-school, where pious, but, we believe, 
 mistaken efforts were made to instil moral
 
 88 CHILDREN'S HABITS. 
 
 principles by teaching isolated texts of scripture. 
 The child learned Mother Goose Melodies on 
 week days with equal pleasure, and upon the 
 occasion of a public display of juvenile virtue 
 and wisdom, the little one was placed upon a 
 desk in order that she might be seen as well as 
 heard. With perfect gravity she recited : " In 
 those days came John the Baptist, preaching in 
 the wilderness of Judea, .saying: Old Mother 
 Flipperty Flapperty fell out of bed, raised up 
 the window and tucked out her head, and said, 
 John, John, our old gray goose is dead ! " 
 
 Nor could the baby heart or mind grasp the 
 problem presented by the unseemly mirth which 
 greeted her effort. It seems an easy mental 
 path from John the Baptist to the John with 
 an interest in the old gray goose. 
 
 With G. Stanley Hall we believe that the 
 right should not be an exceptional thing, not a 
 medicine, but a diet. There are hourly oppor- 
 tunities to insist upon the unselfish doing 
 whereby the child will grow into habits of 
 righteous living. George Eliot never wrote 
 truer words than that the ten thousand little
 
 CHILDKEN'S HABITS. 89 
 
 acts in the right directions may decide the im- 
 portant choice in later life by which the man 
 will rise or fall when a supreme temptation is 
 presented. When we are unable to judge a 
 single act by its possible motive, let us remem- 
 ber the statement of Plutarch, "It is often well 
 to pretend not to have observed some actions of 
 children." 
 
 A child is hardened by public rebuke. If we 
 would help him to grow in sensitiveness to our 
 approval and disapproval, let us privately 
 rebuke his errors, remembering Rousseau's 
 admonition : " You would indeed make a mere 
 animal of him by this method if you are con- 
 tinually directing him and saying, l Go, come, 
 stay, do this ; stop doing that ! ' If your head 
 is always to guide his arm, his own head will 
 be of no use to him." 
 
 The importance of children's habits cannot 
 be over-estimated, but we are too apt to think 
 of the child's character as clay to be moulded, 
 rather than as a plant in God's garden, we 
 being permitted to go " thus far and no 
 farther." The eternal boundaries of the indi-
 
 90 CHILDREN'S HABITS. 
 
 viduality of life protect every soul from the 
 profane touch of every other soul. 
 
 An obedient, tractable little girl once turned 
 upon her loving guardian with this question : 
 " Now, if you should tell me to pick up this 
 little stick, and I should say, ' I will not,' could 
 you make me do it?" There was some hesita- 
 tion about the answer and an attempted eva- 
 sion: "I suppose my little girl would do it 
 without making, if I told her to do it." 
 " Yes, but I mean, could you or anybody else 
 MAKE me do it if / would not ? " And then 
 there burst upon the astonished listener this 
 assertion of a will power possibly just dis- 
 covered by the young explorer : " I think 
 you couldn't make me do it, if you whipped 
 me to death ! " "I suppose not, my child. 
 We are so made that we can do as we will, 
 and it is a dreadful thing to will to do 
 wrong." 
 
 Long silence on the part of the maiden of 
 five, during which she smilingly picked up the 
 stick which she had brought into the discussion, 
 as if she felt the need of some self-discipline,
 
 CHILDREN'S HABITS. 91 
 
 and the walk was resumed. Soon the little 
 philosopher began again : " Could God make 
 me pick up the stick if I wouldn't ? " "I 
 believe not, my child." 
 
 Here were mysteries of development which 
 set the elder speaker to a kind of thinking 
 which was too serious to admit of much chatter, 
 and the child, evidently relieved of a weighty 
 topic, appeared to forget it in play. A few 
 days later she asked for a whole day in which 
 nobody should tell her to do anything; a day 
 in which she need ask no permissions, but 
 should do everything just as she pleased. The 
 permission was somewhat fearfully granted, 
 with some remark upon the danger of it, were 
 she not a little girl who was pleased to do 
 right. 
 
 The trust was not betrayed, and the restraints 
 placed upon herself in matters in which she dis- 
 trusted her own judgment were remarkable. 
 This privilege of self-government was frequently 
 asked during childhood and early girlhood, and 
 these days grew to be days of great pleasure to 
 all concerned.
 
 92 CHILDREN'S HABITS. 
 
 The child is now a woman of rare conscien- 
 tiousness and straightforwardness, her will hav- 
 ing been trained in such a direction that it 
 spontaneously chooses that which is correct, 
 her thoughts in the region of morals rising 
 entirely above the mists of appearance into the 
 clear shining of eternal right. 
 
 It is not argued that all children of five years 
 of age could be thus treated, nor is it assumed 
 that this was the only way in which this par- 
 ticular child could have been trained, there 
 are many paths that lead to the same " delec- 
 table mountains." In whatever one we choose 
 to tread, let us remember the words of W. T. 
 Harris : " It is quite necessary that we should, 
 as educators, never forget that the humblest 
 child nay, the most depraved child has 
 within him the possibility of the highest angelic 
 being."
 
 LEARNING TO USE MONEY. 3 
 
 Not what I have, but what I do, is my kingdom. CARLYLE. 
 
 BEGINNING work several years since in one 
 of the free kindergartens supported by private 
 means, I was not only distressed by the improv- 
 idence of the parents, but alarmed by the ten- 
 dencies of thought and growing character in 
 the children. A little boy of three years said 
 one day in a burst of confidence : " When I git 
 big enough to work and git money, I'll git 
 drunk like my papa and mamma." On being 
 told there was a better use for the money 
 earned by work, he asked with great interest 
 and curiosity if I did not get drunk Saturday 
 nights. When asked how he thought I pro- 
 cured my watch with which he happened to be 
 
 : Read before the Massachusetts General Conference of Char- 
 ities. 
 
 93
 
 94 LEARNING TO USE MONEY. 
 
 ; toying, he said, " Somebody guv it to you." 
 I answered that with my money I bought books 
 and clothes and would be ashamed to have any 
 one give them to me. His wonder and aston- 
 ishment I shall never forget ; and his questions 
 as to the cost of all my possessions, the amount 
 of my money Saturday nights, and the puzzle 
 as to how I could keep it over Sunday, showed 
 an awakening perception which was most grati- 
 fying. He often told the children afterwards 
 that he was going to buy a horse of his own. 
 These children, whose fathers worked on the 
 streets and whose mothers went out to wash, 
 brought cents almost daily which were wasted 
 on candy and greasy cakes. On one occasion 
 we took them to the country for the day, and 
 one little girl who had a cent began to inquire 
 for a store as soon as we arrived there. She 
 was told that the stores were left in the city ; 
 but she thought a peanut-stand would meet 
 her needs, and on hearing that there were no 
 peanut-stands in the woods, she began a fretful 
 cry for candy, for peanuts, for cake, for gum, 
 for anything, in short, for which she could
 
 LEARNING TO USE MONEY. 95 
 
 exchange her cent. "Buy a daisy!" was half 
 playfully suggested, and the problem was solved. 
 She gave her cent to a playmate in exchange 
 for a daisy and was happy. She had failed to 
 gather any for herself while fretting for a store, 
 but now that the cent was off her mind she 
 plucked daisies with the others and was con- 
 tented. 
 
 To correct and counteract such evil tenden- 
 cies as these, an experiment was tried, which 
 we believe to have been remarkably suggestive: 
 a bank in the shape of an elephant was pro- 
 cured, and a bank account opened with such of 
 the children as thought the fun of pulling the 
 animal's tail and thereby throwing their cents 
 from his trunk into his mouth, equal to that 
 of buying candy and peanuts. 
 
 Between Christmas and the following June a 
 dollar and sixty cents were placed in the bank, 
 thirty children having made deposits. They 
 were charged not to tease for money, and the 
 parents made no complaint of their having done 
 so. The depositors who were to leave kinder- 
 garten for public school in September were al-
 
 96 LEARNING TO USE MONEY. 
 
 lowed to draw and spend the money at a five- 
 cent store, the articles from which they were to 
 choose being placed in a large basket, and con- 
 sisting of a large variety of small and useful 
 household things, as well as toys. On our way 
 to the store, a child with sixteen cents stopped 
 before a fruit store, saying, " I want a banana." 
 She was told that she might buy it on her re- 
 turn if she should want it then and should have 
 enough money left. At the five-cent store she 
 bought a fan for her mother, and a pocket-book 
 for herself, into which she put her remaining six 
 cents, with the decided expression, "I've bought 
 all I want." She even went outside, and sat 
 contentedly on the steps while the others made 
 their purchases. When we passed the fruit 
 store on our return, she asked in an indifferent 
 but absurdly business-like tone what was the 
 price of peanuts; but she spent nothing more, 
 and what is better, gave no hints that she would 
 like to have anybody spend for her. She 
 carried the purse with the six cents therein to 
 a picnic next day, taking care of it all day 
 without losing either purse or money.
 
 LEARNING TO USE MONEY. 97 
 
 Another child, who started for the store with 
 seven cents, lost one in its frequent exchange 
 from pocket to hand. She bought a doll, and 
 carried a cent home to her mother. Another 
 girl bought a tea-set, taking her remaining two 
 cents to her mother and sister " for a present." 
 
 A boy with seven cents bought a hammer, 
 taking two cents home to keep. Another boy, 
 with twelve cents, bought a garden rake and a 
 rubber ball, putting the remainder in his jacket 
 pocket, but soon handed it to me, saying, " Put 
 this in the bank for me, and be sure you write 
 it down in the bank book." This anxiety about 
 his security was quite natural, as we did not 
 carry the book with us, and he thought it might 
 be forgotten. He carried his rubber ball to the 
 picnic next day, and was both generous and 
 careful in play with it. 
 
 No child was advised or influenced in its 
 purchases except in the case of the banana. In 
 every instance the saving was entirely spon- 
 taneous, as well as the uses to which they put 
 that which they saved. They were shown arti- 
 cles whi^h they could have bought for a cent,
 
 98 LEARNING TO USE MONEY. 
 
 and they had the full consent of their parents 
 to buy anything of which the teacher approved, 
 but every child refused to spend all it possessed. 
 It may be thought by some that this money 
 should have been put in the savings bank at 
 interest ; but the reward of self-denial in chil- 
 dren should not be placed too far in the future. 
 And there are many who will agree in the 
 belief that the judicious spending of money is 
 as much a matter of education as the saving of 
 money, and that early training in this direction 
 may be a needful check upon miserly tendencies 
 which might follow the extreme wastefulness 
 against which we are working. It is hoped 
 that seed was sown which will bear fruit in 
 future domestic economy.
 
 SOUND-BLINDNESS. 1 
 
 He cared for their heads as he did for their hearts, demand- 
 ing that whatever entered them should be plain and clear as 
 the silent moon in the sky. PESTALOZZI. 
 
 SOUND-BLINDNESS is given as a title, not be- 
 cause of its fitness, but because it is one in most 
 common use and is made to cover as many 
 shades of physical disorders as used to be 
 classed under heresy in the region of morals. 
 
 Actual deafness to certain tones Dr. Clarence 
 Blake (one of the most eminent aurists in 
 America) thinks is never congenital, as is blind- 
 ness to certain colors, exception being made of 
 cases of children who have no perception of 
 musical sequence and of tone value, who never 
 appreciate and cannot reproduce a melody. If 
 other cases exist, they are not on record. 
 
 1 Read before the National Convention of Teachers at Nash- 
 ville, Tenn. 
 
 99
 
 100 SOUND-BLINDNESS. 
 
 We are perfectly familiar with the fact that 
 children learn to talk by a slow and laborious 
 process; that they learn to see and hear by 
 processes more or less analagous is not so well 
 recognized. 
 
 It is true that all infants are born deaf and 
 remain deaf for a period, varying from hours to 
 days, but comparatively few mothers know it or 
 would believe the highest authorities, Preyer 
 of Germany and Perez of France. 
 
 On the other hand, the same doubts and denials 
 are instantly met when told that a child was 
 unmistakably affected by a rose-colored curtain 
 when only twenty-three days old. 
 
 From observation we have learned that hear- 
 ing develops more slowly than sight ; we know 
 the infant slowly learns to direct its gaze not 
 being so well endowed as a chicken in many of 
 the beginnings of life. From experiments made 
 by myself I know there is wide variation among 
 children of the ability to locate sounds. 
 
 That there were such defects of sight as color- 
 blindness and near-sightedness the public has 
 been slow to recognize, and that Dr. Jeffries
 
 SOUND-BLINDNESS. 101 
 
 met with stubborn resistance even from teachers 
 when he began his investigations gives cause for 
 shame and regret. 
 
 It would seem that from analogy alone we 
 should have looked for some defects of hearing 
 not amounting to actual deafness. We can re- 
 call such expressions as " you must hear with 
 your elbows " ; " you would better take the 
 wool out of your ears," and others of like pur- 
 port, the cruelty of which can only be excused 
 on the ground that the inability to hear is 
 attributed to inattention by those who make 
 such remarks, for no one would use sarcasm 
 upon a child afflicted with partial blindness, 
 nor would partial deafness be so treated if 
 understood. 
 
 I once read to a young girl who was learn- 
 ing to cook that onions were good for the 
 mucous membrane. 
 
 " Good for 'membrin ! " she exclaimed; " then 
 I'll eat onions the rest of my life, for I never 
 could remember anything." 
 
 I could not help laughing, but it led me to 
 closer observation of the girl, who proved to
 
 102 SOUND-BLINDNESS. 
 
 have a disorder of the ear, which blurred her 
 understanding of nearly all that she heard. 
 
 Permission to enter the public schools for the 
 purpose of testing the hearing of pupils was 
 granted by the School Board of Boston, and 
 standing upon the teacher's platform, the follow- 
 ing words were pronounced after testing the 
 pitch and loudness of voice by a few words 
 addressed to the master, who stood at the oppo- 
 site side of the room: ultramarine, altruistic, 
 frustrate, ultimatum, ululate, Alcibiades, and un- 
 augmented. Time was given between the pro- 
 nunciation of each word for the slowest pupil 
 to write it upon a slip of paper, words being 
 repeated as often as required, some of them 
 having been clearly pronounced five successive 
 times. In the Latin School, two hundred and 
 fifty-nine boys, whose ages range from twelve 
 to twenty years, were given this test, eighty- 
 four of whom made corresponding mistakes 
 in the vowel sounds, their papers showing, e.g., 
 altramarine, ultruistic, /rostrate, altimatum, elu- 
 late, olulate, alulate, and unolmented. At this 
 stage of the investigation Dr. Clarence Blake
 
 SOUND-BLINDNESS. 103 
 
 was consulted, who gave a much better list of 
 test words ; viz. : fan, log, long, pen, dog, pod, 
 land, few, and cat. 
 
 The eighty-four pupils who confused the 
 vowel sounds in the polysyllables were seated 
 in their various rooms in the front row, while 
 the observer stood at the back of the room, 
 pronouncing these monosyllables but once, the 
 pupils having had notice of this arrangement 
 that they might give instant attention. Only 
 four of the eighty-four spelled all these mono- 
 syllables correctly, their papers showing the 
 same confusion of sounds as in the poly- 
 syllables. 
 
 - 
 
 A final and individual test with an aurist's 
 tuning-fork was now given the eighty pupils 
 who had failed in correct hearing, Dr. Blake 
 kindly furnishing the fork (C, 562 vs.) and 
 directing its use ; the fork was struck with a 
 rubber-covered hammer, the pupil standing 
 twelve feet away, with his back to the observer. 
 Two cases of deafness were found, which were 
 known to the teacher, but not to the master. 
 Several doubtful cases were found, which were
 
 104 SOUND-BLINDNESS. 
 
 given the benefit of the doubt, as it was 
 impracticable to have them examined by a 
 specialist. 
 
 In the English High School, two hundred 
 and twenty-three boys between the ages of 
 thirteen and eighteen were tested with the 
 polysyllables, one hundred and five of whom 
 made mistakes corresponding to those already 
 noted. Of the one hundred and five, ninety- 
 two misspelled from one to four of the mono- 
 syllables, the errors being in general a repetition 
 of those made in the Latin School, in which 
 pupils are received prior to graduation from 
 grammar school, while all English High 
 School pupils are graduates of grammar depart- 
 ments. 
 
 In the Comins Grammar School five hundred 
 and thirty pupils between the ages of eight 
 and fourteen were tested with the mono- 
 syllables, only thirty-four of whom spelled all 
 the words correctly. The tests here gave 
 fairer results, the same room being used for 
 every pupil tested, and the test words being 
 given to classes of sixteen only, there being
 
 SOUND-BLINDNESS. 105 
 
 no other pupils in the room and no outside 
 distractions ; with the tuning-fork first used 
 there were unavoidable variations of weight 
 in the stroke, dependent upon the mental and 
 physical condition of the observer, and Dr. 
 Blake kindly furnished another more easily 
 manipulated. Five children were found who 
 could not hear this tone twelve feet away, and 
 in neither case had the teachers or master 
 suspected the existence of any disorder of the 
 ear. Two of these were among the brightest 
 in the room, and were seated furthest from 
 their teachers ; the others were supposed to be 
 dull and inattentive. After the discovery of 
 deafness, these pupils were particularly ob- 
 served, and the bright ones were found to have 
 the habit of closely watching the lips of any 
 one speaking, bending to one side during dic- 
 tation exercises, in order not to lose sight of 
 the teacher's face. 
 
 We see from these tests one in each hundred 
 in this grammar school has some disorder of the 
 ear. To know if the five suffer from the same 
 form of disease would require examination by
 
 106 SOUND-BLINDNESS. 
 
 a specialist. Dr. Clarence Blake consented to 
 make the examination, but I was unable to 
 take the time and trouble required to carry 
 the work further. 
 
 One is immediately struck by the differ- 
 ence between final tests in the high schools 
 and grammar departments, but is it not likely 
 that the pupils in grammar school who work 
 under the disadvantage of such a disorder never 
 get beyond the grammar grade ? 
 
 What the per cent would be in the primary 
 grades is matter of conjecture, but it would be 
 interesting to trace the relation between tru- 
 ancy and sound-blindness, and between general 
 lack of interest in school work and duliiess of 
 hearing not even known by the child as exist- 
 ing at all. 
 
 The tests made prove conclusively the ex- 
 istence of an obstacle to the acquirement of 
 information on the part of pupils which has 
 never been sufficiently recognized as existent 
 and the causes of which should be made the 
 subject of special examination. 
 
 Agassiz wrote, " A physical fact is as sacred
 
 SOUND-BLINDNESS. 107 
 
 as a moral principle." In this matter we have 
 to deal with a physical fact of the gravest 
 importance, one which may be so closely inter- 
 woven with moral consequences that the teacher 
 may not be able to excuse himself if he con- 
 tinues to overlook it. Every child in our pub- 
 lic schools should have the hearing tested at 
 longer or shorter intervals. It is but just that 
 the dull or inattentive child should have the 
 benefit of such light as a test of this kind 
 would throw upon his dulness or inattention, 
 for the simple changing of his seat from the 
 back or middle of the room to a point where 
 he can hear all the teacher's words, might 
 prove that there are some causes for inattention, 
 mischievousness, and dulness that cannot be 
 attributed to the perverseness of the child, nor 
 can we flippantly assert that stupidity is his 
 birthright.
 
 A STUDY OF ADOLESCENCE. 1 
 
 A physical fact is as sacred as a moral principle. AGASSIZ. 
 
 BEFORE entering upon this discussion, it is 
 necessary to deprecate the one-sidedness with 
 which it is usually treated. The rule seems 
 to have been either to let the matter wholly 
 alone as immodest, or to fly to the other 
 extreme, which would preach its importance 
 from the pulpit, discuss it at table, and teach 
 it in school. It is natural that a physician 
 whose specialty is diseases relating to this 
 side of life should magnify the importance of 
 all that relates to it ; but we must insist 
 that it should be neither neglected nor mag- 
 nified. The great aurist will tell us that 
 our asylums for idiots would be depleted if 
 
 1 Read before the Women's Physiological Union, Boston, 
 Mass. 
 
 108
 
 A STUDY OF ADOLESCENCE. 109 
 
 proper care were given the ear ; the great 
 oculist will show that most brain troubles 
 originate in improper care of the eyes ; but 
 the most disastrous of all hobbies is this 
 hobby of sex. Notwithstanding the dangers 
 that beset us, we must face our difficulties, 
 taking care to keep in mind the nice adjust- 
 ment of all things natural, and help, if we 
 can, simply to preserve that adjustment. 
 
 That in this country the adolescent period 
 is much shorter than in other parts of the 
 world has been overlooked even by many 
 physicians. It is, nevertheless, a fact that 
 the physiological changes are exceptionally 
 sudden, and that our boys and girls pass 
 through this fundamental crisis without the 
 safeguards which it is our duty to provide. 
 
 Most mothers are aware of the more com- 
 mon outward signs of this approaching change; 
 but many think their whole duty performed 
 when some special temporary care has been 
 taken that for a few months colds are not 
 contracted. In case of any general derange- 
 ment of health the physician is more promptly
 
 110 A STUDY OF ADOLESCENCE. 
 
 consulted at this period even by the most 
 ignorant parents. No doubt every mother of 
 a boy or girl of fourteen could describe the 
 external changes which attend this period ; 
 but if every mother knew, as does the physi- 
 cian, that the change in her boy's voice bears 
 little comparison to the greater change which 
 takes place in his brain, and that the marked 
 and rapid growth of her girl's bust is not as 
 wonderful as the actual physical change of - 
 her heart which has not been complete in its 
 form or action until now, if mothers in 
 general knew this and teachers understood it 
 more fully, - then a paper of this nature 
 would be superfluous. 
 
 Important as are the physical changes, they 
 are not of such vital consequence as the psy- 
 chological ones. 
 
 Poetry has paid its tribute in every tongue 
 to this rose-hued day ; religious rites have 
 marked its advent in all tribes and nations. 
 I,t remains for Science to lay her steadfast 
 hand upon that which poetry has unwittingly 
 enervated and religion unconsciously dese-
 
 A STUDY OF ADOLESCENCE. Ill 
 
 crated, not in irreverence nor in a spirit of 
 captiousness, but in all earnestness to call 
 attention to some mistakes which have to do 
 with skepticism and irreligion no less than 
 with the physical deterioration which has 
 long been noted among the youth of our day. 
 Divinity doctors know that revival statistics 
 show more conversions at this period than at 
 any other. Perhaps revivalist preachers do 
 not know the wide-spread feeling of contempt 
 often expressed in country and village of the 
 annual convert who began wasting his spirit- 
 ual forces in emotional displays when but a 
 boy at a protracted meeting. Hospitals of all 
 kinds, especially for the insane, show that in 
 this critical period lie the roots of hosts of 
 diseases that crop out in later life, and none 
 is more fruitful than that of " emotional prod- 
 igality " at this time. This particular error 
 is founded upon the well-known plasticity of 
 youth, and because of this plasticity the child 
 should be protected from all one-sided, emo- 
 tional influences. We might go back to Plato 
 with great profit for our examples. How in-
 
 112 A STUDY OF ADOLESCENCE. 
 
 spiring his lofty enthusiasm concerning the 
 young! How great and with what power for 
 good his picture of the self-poised Socrates 
 who met the beautiful Greek youths with the 
 then necessary tribute to their physical per- 
 fections, but never left them to dwell on 
 these things, but called them higher so skil- 
 fully that they hardly knew the divine im- 
 petus had been from the outside. 
 
 Ancient and modern writers and teachers 
 have dwelt upon the psychological importance 
 of this period. The mass of literature upon its 
 physiological side alone is bewildering, but that 
 great German philosophers of modern times con- 
 sider it of sufficient importance to write whole 
 volumes upon it, as Schneider, Kraft-Ebing, 
 and others have done, may well cause us to look 
 seriously into the subject. 
 
 In view of these facts a paper was sent to a 
 large number of parents, teachers, and physi- 
 cians in America, with questions about personal 
 observations which touched both the physiology 
 and the psychology of the matter. 
 
 Notes on general health, temper, studies,
 
 A STUDY OF ADOLESCENCE. 113 
 
 dreams, and tastes at this period were sought. 
 The returns brought out one point rather more 
 prominently than was anticipated; viz., the 
 importance of dreams at this stage of life. 
 
 So many cases were reported as not particu- 
 larly noticeable, except the increase of dreams, 
 either beautiful or troubled, that this was made 
 an especial point of investigation, keeping in 
 mind the action of the brain in dreaming and 
 the close relation between the brain and the 
 sexual organs. These returns show a marked 
 increase in the quantity of dreams at this pe- 
 riod, and enough has been gathered to give 
 weight to the theory that dreams are rhythmical, 
 either increasing or decreasing at certain times 
 in the month. The returns also indicate that 
 radical changes are demanded in the mode of 
 life and the subject-matter of education at the 
 dawn of this period. Changes in hygiene, in 
 .food, dress, and social life are imperatively 
 needed. Physicians and educators may warn in 
 vain, but they must continue to make their 
 demands. The dress of girls has been so wisely 
 modified that statistics show an increase in
 
 114 A STUDY OF ADOLESCENCE. 
 
 average height and waist measure in the last 
 twenty years. If some dress adapted to this 
 climate, but fashioned upon the model of ease 
 to say nothing of grace, which Greek and Ro- 
 man youths wore when physical beauty was at 
 its highest, we might hope to see a long list of 
 weaknesses and crimes reduced to the minimum, 
 instead of waxing to an alarming extent. The 
 dress of our boys of to-day is about as unhygi- 
 enic as it is ungraceful and uncomfortable. 
 
 Our errors in the subject-matter taught are 
 equally grave. 
 
 Philosophy, as at present forced upon imma- 
 ture minds, is most disastrous. Introspection , 
 and any study which leads to it should be 
 discouraged at this period. Questions of the 
 reality of the external world, and of personal 
 existence at this time of life, are as irrational 
 as are the morbid appeals to morbid emojjeas 
 in the revival meetings held for children. "We- 
 challenge no motives in either case ; but we 
 must condemn a course of philosophy which 
 makes restless iconoclasts of young men, as 
 severely as we criticise religious methods which 
 make a skeptical man of almost every over-
 
 A STUDY OF ADOLESCENCE. 115 
 
 pious boy. We have no right to play upon the tx 
 emotions at this critical time of life; they who 
 do so are directly responsible for much spiritual 
 torpor and physical derangement in later years. 
 Every study, every occupation, every interest in 
 life, at this time should look to the conservation 
 of force, and not to its dispersion, to /a rigid 
 economy of spiritual enthusiasm, combined with 
 a careful training of the muscular powers. 
 
 We must hold the attention and interest of 
 our pupils without unduly exciting them. The 
 subject of studies cannot be dismissed without 
 a protest against botany with its present 
 nomenclature, introduced as it is just when 
 we would keep the thoughts of our boys and 
 girls occupied with that which cannot be 
 centred upon themselves. I know there is 
 a theory that physiology should be taught 
 through botany; but it seems pernicious to 
 lead the brightest and most curious minds 
 away from plant life by all this physiological 
 phraseology with the special side of reproduc- 
 tion of animal life made prominent in so many 
 of the botanical terms. It destroys that ad- 
 justment for which we plead.
 
 MENTAL IMAGERY OF BOYS. 
 
 What men think of the world depends upon what they know 
 of it. G. STANLEY HALL. 
 
 ONE hundred and thirteen schoolboys,' be- 
 tween the ages of thirteen and eighteen, were 
 asked to write their first thoughts or mental 
 images on seeing the words being, the infinite, 
 literature, abstraction, number, play, coldness, 
 horror, heat, faith, and fun. A word was writ- 
 ten upon the blackboard and a few moments 
 given the pupils to transcribe their impressions, 
 when the word was erased and another written. 
 A few minutes each day were given to the 
 exercise, some three or four words being given 
 in succession, number, play, and coldness hap- 
 pening to be given at one sitting. Many of 
 the images have the local coloring of the 
 
 116
 
 MENTAL IMAGERY OF BOYS. 117 
 
 time and place. The boys had been studying 
 Sir Walter Scott, as their papers reveal, and 
 during the week of the experiment the entire 
 city of Boston was thrilled with horror by a 
 suburban railroad disaster, the shadow of 
 which is cast upon these papers, which also 
 reflects the enthusiasm of the prize drill, the 
 papers as a whole giving one the impression 
 of a kaleidoscope where thoughts take the 
 place of colored glass, the feelings regulating 
 the symmetry of the forms. 
 
 Under being forty-four wrote "human be- 
 ing," which may or may not have been an 
 attempt to define ; eighteen wrote the name 
 of the Deity under different forms ; eight 
 wrote "something living"; four gave it as 
 " our life " ; two as " human existence " ; three 
 specifying Wallace, Adam and Blanche, " my- 
 self " ; others giving general examples, as 
 monkey, dog, horse, man and woman. If 
 one could but know if the man were a war- 
 rior, the dog a Saint Bernard, the monkey a 
 wild one in a cocoanut tree, or one caged in 
 a zoological garden, or passing its scarlet cap
 
 118 MENTAL IMAGERY OF BOYS. 
 
 for the organ-grinder, then the interest would 
 be increased. 
 
 Creation and something that cannot be lim- 
 ited were suggested, and one poetic mind 
 gave us this : " I see a beautiful being over 
 a baby's cradle, rocking him to sleep." A 
 minute description of that "beautiful being" 
 would be valuable. Six gave no expression 
 to their thought about the word, which might 
 have been from shyness about giving the 
 thought to another, or a misunderstanding 
 of the experiment, and perhaps from a lack 
 of any impression. 
 
 Under the word infinite, twenty-nine directly 
 named God ; one, love of God, none of these 
 being of the seven who named Him under 
 " being" ; twenty-one gave no expression ; five, 
 the algebraic quantity oo ; five, the sky ; three, 
 the infinite number ; two, the unknown ; one, 
 the problem never finished, 10 -*- 3 ; something 
 dark ; the future ; number of wonderful things ; 
 number of boys ; something beyond us ; space ; 
 distance ; " a long line of which I cannot see the 
 end"; small thing; the universe; a large tree
 
 MENTAL IMAGERY OF BOYS. 119 
 
 with infinite number of leaves ; a sermon in 
 which the minister said, God is infinite love ; 
 the air ; time ; city ; a large man ; the Globe 
 building, to this the boy added, parenthet- 
 ically, " infinitely large " ; miraculous ; everlast- 
 ing ; heavenly spirits ; space ; day ; end of be- 
 ing ; life everlasting ; Venus on the sun ; some- 
 thing to happen ; form of verb ; grammar ; book 
 entitled Letters from Hell. No blanks were 
 given with this word, but there were four under 
 literature, a suggestive fact. 
 
 To twenty-six literature suggested books, some 
 specifying good books, story books, etc. ; seven 
 wrote reading ; three, history ; three, Longfel- 
 low ; three, Scott ; three, Waverley ; Ivanhoe, 
 Dickens, The Inferno, Shakespeare, Homer, and 
 Milton each having had honorable mention. 
 Two dime novels were suggested. Among pic- 
 turesque thoughts appeared : " A man printing 
 a book"; "with literature comes sight of im- 
 mense library with books of all ages and peo- 
 ples"; "ancient Greece, especially Athens and 
 old Greek tablets." A painting, funny composi- 
 tion, piles of papers, and something classical are
 
 120 MENTAL IMAGERY OF BOYS. 
 
 as definite, perhaps, as some of the adult notions 
 of literature. 
 
 Under abstraction there were thirty-seven 
 blanks ; twenty-three attempted to define or il- 
 lustrate, some of these efforts being too unique 
 for omission, as flavoring for ice cream ; flavor- 
 ing put up in bottles ; getting a tooth pulled ; 
 apples and baskets ; spoke of a wheel ; kind- 
 ness, and a man with head resting on hands, 
 elbows resting on marble top table ; a boy lean- 
 ing on his hand and looking as if he saw some- 
 thing away off ; sitting at a window in the 
 country looking blankly into the air ; a crazy 
 person comes to mind ; " I picture a man in deep 
 thought " ; works of nature, especially beauti- 
 ful scenery. Others wrote kindness, goodness, 
 grammar, future, a wood, part of speech, an 
 abstract person, something small, pleasure of 
 having plenty of money, baskets of flowers, and 
 this list of words about which I ain writing. 
 
 Under number, thirty-seven tried to define or 
 illustrate ; fifteen wrote that it brought to mind 
 various numbers, 1,000,000, 1, 2, etc. ; eleven 
 left a blank ; nine wrote a figure or figures ;
 
 MENTAL IMAGERY OF BOYS. 121 
 
 two, algebra. Limitation was twice suggested, 
 and under the preliminary " it brought to 
 mind," or " it puts in my mind," were written : 
 a row of blocks ; a collection of men ; the times 
 I have been in swimming ; the wonders of 
 arithmetic ; and number 30 La Grange Street. 
 Others stated without explanation : the first 
 page of an arithmetic ; the score in a game of 
 tennis ; a number of soldiers ; a lot of people 
 on the Fourth of July ; sand in the sea ; crowds 
 of people in various places. One boy wrote 
 simply " newspaper," and another that number 
 led to numerals. A connection was made be- 
 tween this and the two succeeding words, viz. : 
 " On seeing number I thought of a number of 
 boys think of them yet as I see play, and the 
 same group appears to be playing, but growing 
 cold toward each other." 
 
 Three wrote unreservedly : I see a figure ; I 
 see a figure on the door ; I see an unreadable 
 number that I once saw. The italics are, of 
 course, my own. 
 
 Under play thirty-seven defined or illustrated ; 
 five left blanks, one of whom gave the most
 
 122 MENTAL IMAGEHY OF BOYS. 
 
 elaborate of the mental pictures under abstrac- 
 tion ; seven specified children, some designating 
 little children, and kittens playing in various 
 ways ; thirteen thought of base ball ; four, of a 
 theatrical performance, one of these specifying 
 Lady of the Lake ; two thought of Richard the 
 Third ; four, of lawn tennis ; three, of piano 
 playing, one giving this : " Play brings to me 
 the figure of a person seated at a piano engaged 
 in playing it." One wrote without preliminary : 
 "A large stage over which are some red cur- 
 tains and a very small man declaiming." The 
 vividness of this sketch leaves the bad construc- 
 tion of the sentence for an after-impression. 
 
 Three wrote : " I see boys or children running 
 round " ; "I see the boys play " ; "I see some- 
 body playing." 
 
 It is interesting to note in the first of these 
 vivid images that the boy saw more clearly as 
 he wrote, or he would not have changed his 
 sentence from " I see boys " to "I see boys or 
 children." 
 
 Twenty-six defined coldness, the spiritual and 
 physical significance being about equally repre-
 
 MENTAL IMAGERY OF BOYS. 123 
 
 sented ; twenty-six thought of winter, or a day 
 in winter ; seven simply wrote ice ; five gave 
 blanks; others giving such picturesque details 
 as these : a man with a very stern face ; a large 
 field of ice ; a frosty ground with here and 
 there a stump ; I think of the look of coldness 
 on the face of a high-toned boy toward his 
 poorly dressed comrades ; surly temper ; anger ; 
 shivering ; Greeley's expedition to the North 
 Pole ; proud person ; firmness in a man ; mak- 
 ing a call on a young lady who is not at home ; 
 dressing myself in a big overcoat ; not being 
 sympathetic toward the poor ; don't notice any 
 of your parents ; I think of unhospitality ; as- 
 sociated with kicking the feet against the dash- 
 board of a horse car, and an ulster with a high 
 collar ; Iceland ; sharp cutting wind ; I see the 
 frost and snow ; I see a cold, haughty person ; 
 dark gray objects appear. 
 
 Fifty-one defined heat ; five left blanks ; three 
 thought of a stove ; two, of a furnace ; one, of a 
 furnace for melting glass, and one of a smelting- 
 furnace ; one, of a register, and another, of a 
 radiator, gilded ; one, of the school-house boiler-
 
 124 MENTAL IMAGEKY OF BOYS. 
 
 room ; two, of summer ; two, of fire ; three, of 
 the sun ; one, of the desert of Sahara ; the 
 others, of parading around the city; a red-hot 
 ball rolling on the floor ; melted butter ; anger ; 
 a day in East Lexington with buzzing of locusts ; 
 a fat man trying to get his breath ; a large vat 
 under which is a fire filled with saints. 
 
 Fifty-five attempted to define faith; four- 
 teen left blanks ; three mentioned dogs ; two 
 wrote simply a cross ; one, a church ; one, a 
 catechism ; one, a prayer-book ; and others 
 such typical subjects as Daniel in the lions' 
 den ; tableau once seen, picture of Faith, Hope 
 and Charity ; one thought of the Supreme 
 Being, and another of an Irishman's exclama- 
 tion. To one was suggested the water-cooler 
 on the Common ; to another the story of Saint 
 Elizabeth. One wrote this : " Faith brings 
 a figure of a child on a high fence, a person 
 below trying to get it to come down, and 
 then the child drops." Another gave this 
 dramatic picture: "A girl following a very 
 ugly man through a dark tunnel." And still
 
 MENTAL IMAGERY OF BOYS. 125 
 
 another : " A frightened child clinging to its 
 father for protection." 
 
 It was surprising that the word fun proved 
 the least interesting of all, eight even leaving 
 a blank. I half suspect these boys did not 
 choose to write their notions of fun. A smil- 
 ing face, a laughing boy, and a girl laughing 
 were suggested, one boy writing : " I see 
 boys playing." 
 
 Fifty-two denned or illustrated horror, eight 
 of whom wrote "murder," and one "assassina- 
 tion"; some left blanks; others wrote death, 
 fire, an avalanche, drowning and battle, two 
 only suggesting ghosts. It would be interest- 
 ing to know whether each thought of a par- 
 ticular fire, death, or battle. One wrote : 
 " I imagine a murder " ; another, simply a 
 picture of a man to be hung. Others as 
 follows : a beer-saloon ; one being killed ; the 
 accident at Roslindale ; a horrible-looking word, 
 -looks as if it should be spelled hell; makes 
 me think of seeing some one in distress ; makes 
 me think of some terrible accident ; a woman 
 and a mouse ; a lady looking at an alligator ;
 
 126 MENTAL IMAGERY OF BOYS. 
 
 seeing a man run over here ; a boy I saw 
 stabbed, and another run over by a horse-car ; 
 a fellow holding his hand in the air, his hair 
 standing on end; an old lady holding up both 
 hands; horror is represented by a man falling 
 from a great height, and many people are 
 watching him; horror brought to my mind a 
 person dying who regarded death with horror ; 
 makes me think of the time I was chased ; 
 makes me think of the feeling I would have if 
 a large spider were crawling over me ; the feel- 
 ing I imagine if I were drowning; I think of 
 a robbery ; something cringing ; a train, a 
 smash-up with piercing shrieks ; a woman 
 standing with hands thrown back (from a 
 picture I saw when a child ) ; a dream of 
 snakes I had five years ago ; I see a house 
 on fire, a girl with long, streaming white 
 hair, dressed in white, standing at a window 
 with the fire all around her. 
 
 A picture of a window was drawn on the 
 blackboard for the same boys, who were asked 
 to imagine it a real window, and to write what 
 they saw in looking through it. These are the
 
 MENTAL IMAGERY OF BOYS. 127 
 
 pictures seen : A tree and some houses ; I seem 
 to see a man wearing an old felt hat. I am 
 looking in the window of a small cottage ; there 
 is an old lady in a large arm-chair, knitting ; 
 her young daughter is getting supper, and all 
 seems comfortable and cosy. 
 
 Air, houses, trees, darkness, Christmas tree, 
 children playing, a procession, soldiers, streets, 
 people, many persons, horse-cars, express teams, 
 large buildings, etc. 
 
 I see an old shoemaker pegging away at a 
 laced boot. 
 
 A lot of boys going home ; a long narrow 
 lane in the country with a pasture on one side 
 and a pond on the other, a guide-post and hills 
 in the background ; a green field in the country. 
 
 A moonlight night, a large brick house and a 
 tree. 
 
 An old woman with a large dog that lives on 
 the same street as I. 
 
 I seem to see a beautiful house surrounded by 
 trees and a beautiful lawn. 
 
 A horse and team standing. 
 
 When I look through the window, I seem to
 
 128 MENTAL IMAGERY OF BOYS. 
 
 see a boy fishing in a river, and he seems to be 
 catching many fish. 
 
 Through an imaginary window I can see a 
 field, at the bottom of which there is a lake 
 with boats on it, and beyond is a green forest. 
 
 If to a room, the form of the room and ar- 
 rangements. Reminiscences : Looking out of 
 that imaginary window I seem to see my 
 mother scolding my brother. 
 
 I would see some glass. 
 
 I seem to see trees, a farm-house, grass, and 
 cows, and the Presidential Range in the White 
 Mountains. 
 
 The boy who was run over by a horse-car 
 and his arm badly crushed ; I saw a man fall 
 down ; a procession of boys marching along ; 
 the scenery from a window looking toward 
 Mount Washington ; the man selling lobsters ; 
 a palace court-yard ; engine going to a fire and 
 a crowd following it ; I seem to see a black sub- 
 stance through the window ; the sky ; makes 
 me think of the faces at Blackwell's Island, 
 looking earnestly at the Boston boat. 
 
 A criminal behind a prison door; a stormy
 
 MENTAL IMAGERY OF BOYS. 129 
 
 night ; I see a face it is a sad one with large 
 eyes, which have evidently been crying it is a 
 girl's face with a charity cap on ; a train rush- 
 ing along filled with passengers ; a landscape ; 
 I see a face through this window it appears 
 to me like a look-out on the world ; a game of 
 foot-ball ; a horse-car loaded with people going 
 down the street ; a field ; a woman sewing ; I 
 see the future ; I see a horse and team passing ; 
 transparent ; distant hill ; a dungeon ; trees, 
 fields, spring, horse-chestnut tree ; a hill cov- 
 ered with snow and a few bare trees ; makes me 
 think of seeing some one in a window ; a large 
 room with fine things in it ; soldiers ; an empty 
 room ; friend ; nothing in particular ; the State 
 of Illinois ; I saw some houses through the win- 
 dow ; I see the trees and houses as I look 
 through the window ; stars ; I can see green 
 fields and the ocean, with a lighthouse on a 
 large rock in the middle of it ; a railroad sta- 
 tion. 
 
 I am in a farm-house on a farm, and looking 
 upon the cornfield and a few trees ; some trees ; 
 a lawn inclosed by a fence, with a fountain in
 
 130 MENTAL IMAGERY OF BOYS. 
 
 the centre ; I see a house in the distance ; sky, 
 trees, houses seem to be the only panorama of 
 a window. 
 
 I seem to see a blackboard ; a room ; saw a 
 regiment of soldiers passing ; I see a large 
 house, square and brown ; a dog-fight on Co- 
 lumbus Avenue ; a comfortable room ; I see an 
 evening sky full of stars ; I see the dog outside ; 
 looking at a picture, I think of what it is of, 
 where it is, and who was engaged in it ; a 
 steamboat passing down stream; seeing a sight 
 through a window which can never be forgot, 
 either of horror or pleasure ; I see a young 
 man; it reminds me of the garden, a bed of 
 geraniums at the house I lived in when I was 
 in Germany; looking at a boy; a scuttle of a 
 sinking ship one would see as if painted on 
 a panorama before him from childhood to old 
 age ; I see through this window the ocean with 
 about fifty yachts sailing ; a tree and some 
 houses ; I see a child running across the street, 
 a train is coming, and the child is knocked 
 down and killed ; a lamp-post ; a boy fishing.
 
 MENTAL IMAGERY OF BOYS. 131 
 
 Eight boys drew a blank, and several of them 
 drew pictures of windows on their own papers. 
 
 Such meagre data as the above show that 
 those who disparage "mere sense knowledge" 
 disparage children, who up to these ages show 
 few traces of any other kind of knowledge, but 
 think mainly in visual pictures, their mental 
 life being chiefly made up of imagination and 
 memory of their personal experiences. Logical 
 definitions are never attempted. A true psycho- 
 logical definition of such terms could be got by 
 greatly increasing the number of such returns 
 and presenting the results by graphic, statistic, 
 and descriptive methods. If anywhere constant 
 appeal from the individual to the general con- 
 sciousness is constantly needed, it is in the 
 realm of abstract and general terms. If a care- 
 fully selected set of terms in the ethical field 
 could be selected, and returns gathered thus and 
 separately for different ages and sexes, valuable 
 results might be expected. 
 
 Sir Francis Gulton in some studies of this 
 nature, but on adult minds, makes a table of 
 results from which he draws this conclusion :
 
 132 MENTAL IMAGERY OF BOYS. 
 
 " Hence we may see the greater fixity of the 
 earlier associations, and might measurably de- 
 termine the decrease of fixity as the date of 
 their formation became less remote." 
 
 The city teacher, more than any other, needs 
 to grasp this law, and give the children an 
 early and vivid outlook upon nature ; walls and 
 horse-cars, pavements, and engines are so likely 
 to demand the attention of children that no 
 opportunity should be lost to give a glimpse of 
 the sky or clouds ; to turn the thoughts to a 
 grass plat or even a blade of grass, and so open 
 the windows of the soul in the direction of influ- 
 ences which will accelerate spiritual and intel- 
 lectual growth.
 
 ADVERTISEMENTS
 
 Kindergarten Stories and Morning Talks, 
 
 By Miss SARA E. WILTSE, author of Stories for Kindergartens and Primary 
 Schools. x+ 212 pages. Teachers' and introductory price, 75 cents. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 FIRST WEEK OF SEPTEMBER i 
 
 Mary had a Little Lamb 2 
 
 The Bramble Bush and the Lambs 4 
 
 SECOND WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 6 
 
 Story of Birds and Fish 6 
 
 THIRD WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 8 
 
 Coming and Going 8 
 
 FOURTH WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 1 1 
 
 Tom the Water-Baby 1 1 
 
 Story of a Mouse 19 
 
 The Ermine 23 
 
 Stories for Prang's Trade Pictures 24 
 
 No. I. The Farm- Yard 24 
 
 No. 2. The Gardener 26 
 
 No. 3. The Carpenter 27 
 
 No. 4. The Tinsmith and Printer , . . 28 
 
 No. 5. The Baker 31 
 
 FIRST WEEK OF OCTOBER 34 
 
 The Anxious Leaf 34 
 
 The Walnut-Tree that wanted to bear Tulips 35 
 
 The Walnut-Tree that bore Tulips (continued} 38 
 
 How Coal is made 40 
 
 SECOND WEEK OF OCTOBER 42 
 
 The Lion and the Mouse 43 
 
 Milk, Butter, and Cheese 45
 
 Viii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THIRD WEEK OF OCTOBER 51 
 
 Leather 51 
 
 A Legend of the Great Dipper 54 
 
 FOURTH WEEK OF OCTOBER , 58 
 
 Hair and Bones 58 
 
 Grandma Kaoline 62 
 
 FIFTH WEEK OF OCTOBER 65 
 
 Grandma Kaoline's Story 65 
 
 Horn 68 
 
 The Hare and the Tortoise 71 
 
 FIRST WEEK OF NOVEMBER 73 
 
 Glue 73 
 
 SECOND WEEK OF NOVEMBER 77 
 
 Thanksgiving Story 77 
 
 Steak and Tallow 79 
 
 THIRD WEEK OF NOVEMBER 84 
 
 Story of Three Bears 85 
 
 The Bear that hugged the Tea-Kettle 89 
 
 FOURTH WEEK OF NOVEMBER 91 
 
 Florence Nightingale 92 
 
 Peep Star ! Star Peep ! 93 
 
 FIRST WEEK OF DECEMBER 96 
 
 SECOND WEEK OF DECEMBER 96 
 
 Saint Elizabeth and the Sick Child 97 
 
 THIRD WEEK OF DECEMBER 99 
 
 A Jewish Legend 99 
 
 Saint Christopher 100 
 
 The First Christmas Presents 103 
 
 FOURTH WEEK OF DECEMBER 105 
 
 FIRST WEEK OF JANUARY 105 
 
 Charlotte and the Ten Dwarfs 105 
 
 SECOND WEEK OF JANUARY 107 
 
 Our Daily Bread 107
 
 CONTENTS. IX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Story for Willie Winkle 1 10 
 
 THIRD WEEK OF JANUARY 113 
 
 The Snowflakes 113 
 
 FOURTH WEEK OF JANUARY 117 
 
 The Story of King Midas 1 18 
 
 The Little Cookie Boy 119 
 
 FIRST WEEK OF FEBRUARY 122 
 
 Helps to an Object Lesson on Calico and Print. No. I 122 
 
 SECOND WEEK OF FEBRUARY 125 
 
 Helps to an Object Lesson on Calico and Print. No. 2 125 
 
 THIRD WEEK OF FEBRUARY 129 
 
 FOURTH WEEK OF FEBRUARY 129 
 
 Amy Stewart 1 29 
 
 FIRST WEEK OF MARCH 132 
 
 Helps to an Object Lesson on Paper 132 
 
 SECOND WEEK OF MARCH 135 
 
 Second Lesson, or Review of Paper-Making 135 
 
 THIRD WEEK OF MARCH 137 
 
 Helps to Object Lessons on Rubber 138 
 
 Kitty Caoutchouc 139 
 
 FOURTH WEEK OF MARCH 144 
 
 Second Lesson on Rubber 144 
 
 The Pea-Blossom 146 
 
 Cloth and Paper Story 1 50 
 
 FIRST WEEK OF APRIL 153 
 
 Baby Calla 153 
 
 SECOND WEEK OF APRIL 156 
 
 The Wind and the Sun 156 
 
 THIRD WEEK OF APRIL 158 
 
 A Queer Place for a Bird's Home 158 
 
 FOURTH WEEK OF APRIL 160 
 
 FIFTH WEEK OF APRIL 160 
 
 The Drop of Water 161
 
 X CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FIRST WEEK OF MAY 163 
 
 A Legend of the Cowslip 163 
 
 What are the Dandelions? 165 
 
 Iddly Bung's April Christmas Tree 166 
 
 The Flax 1 70 
 
 SECOND WEEK OF MAY 1 76 
 
 The Green House with Gold Nails 177 
 
 The Bees' Pockets 180 
 
 Carl and the Earthworms 181 
 
 THIRD WEEK OF MAY 183 
 
 Oak-Tree and Acorn 183 
 
 The Greenies 185 
 
 Saint Elizabeth and the Roses 186 
 
 FOURTH W T EEK OF MAY 187 
 
 Helps to an Object Lesson on the Hickory-Tree 187 
 
 The Mice in a Robin's NestV 189 
 
 The Little Harvest Mouse 190 
 
 FIRST WEEK OF JUNE 192 
 
 The Elephant 192 
 
 The Camel 194 
 
 SECOND WEEK OF JUNE 196 
 
 Hercules and the Wagoner 196 
 
 The Crow and the Pitcher 197 
 
 THIRD WEEK OF JUNE 199 
 
 A Story for the Lessons with Staffs and Rings 199 
 
 The Ugly Duckling 201 
 
 We thank Thee 211 
 
 A True Bear Story 211 
 
 Besides the Stories the book contains suggestions for presenting 
 them to the children, outlines for talks, hints for clay modelling, and 
 innumerable helpful remarks. 
 
 GINN & COMPANY, Publishers, 
 
 BOSTON, NEW YORK, AND CHICAGO.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 AUG 1 ? 1962 Lo. Angles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
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