Children's Ways

reaming; for living a life of happy make-believe. Even here, however, we want more accurate observation. For one thing, the play of infantile ima

acting a part or telling a tale, that he never knew a child "who

ime at least, fancy-bound. A child that did not want to play and cared nothing for the ma

light differences of childish fancy. For one thing it suggests that children have their favourite type of mental imagery, that one child's fancy may habitually move in a colour

n on his temperament and predominant feelings. Hence, the familiar fact that in some children imagination br

reconsideration of hasty theories in the light of these. Nor need we object

Transfor

: it is active, often bewilderingly active, when the small person

he star an "eye," I suppose because of its brightness and its

dows". Another boy two years and five months, on looking at the hammers of a piano which his mother was playing, called out: "There is owlegie" (diminutive of owl). His eye had instantly caught the similarity between the round felt disc of the hammer divided by a piece of wood, and the owl's face divided by its beak. In like

to the wind when it whistles or howls at night. The most unpromising things come in for this warming, life-giving touch of a child's fancy. Thus one little fellow, aged one year eight months, conceived a special fondness for the l

f dreamy illusion. This means that only a part of what is present is seen, the part which makes the new object like the old and familiar one. An

s us that when young he got to connect or "associate" the name "crocodile" so closely with the cre

t is not improbable that before the qualities of things and their connections one with another are sufficiently known f

ical tone to have its characteristic tint, which they are able to describe accurately. This "coloured hearing," as it is called, is always traced back to the dimly recalled age of childhood. Children are now beginning to be tested as to their possession of this trick of fancy. It was found in the case of a num

cy it may grow into a momentary illusion. A little girl of four, sitting by the side of her mother in the garden, picked up a small pink worm and said: "Ah! you do look nice; how a thrush would like you!" and thereupon, realising the part of the fortunate thrush, proceeded, to her mo

older and graver folk. There are, however, regions of child-life where it knows no check. One of these is child's play, to be spoken of presently: another is the filling up of

Restin

we got to them. Some children take fright at their big, strange forms and their weird transformations: but a happy child that loves day-dreaming will spend many delightful hours in fashioning these forms into wondrous and delightful things, such as kings and queens, giants and dwarfs, beautiful castles, armies marching to battle, or driven in f

child's fancy with all manner of wondrous scenery and peopled by all manner of strange creatures. At times when they have shown a soft blue, he has made fairy-land of

hich closed in a good part of his horizon. Many a child has had his day-dreams about the country lying beyond the hills on the horizon. One little girl who lived on a

ther unpleasant when confined to a moderate intensity. I remember the look of awe on the face of a small boy whose

thor) I was a child and we played hide and seek in the barn, I always felt that there must or might be something unheard of hidden away behind every bundle of straw, an

ticularly active in relation to the images derived from stories. This housing instinct is strong in the case of the poor houseless fairies. One little boy put his

surroundings. He tells us that "every barn in the neighbourhood, every stone of the church, every foot of the churchyard had some association of its own in my mind connected with these books (Roderic Random, Tom Jones,

tory

world opened up by their story-books, which is all strange and far away from the nursery where t

of the almost overpowering delight which fills its breast, is to be face to face with what is a mystery to most "grown-ups". Perhaps we elders, who are apt to think that we have acquired all the knowledge and to forget how much we have lost, will never understand the spell of a story for the lively impressionable brain of a child. One thing, howe

intelligible simplicity. A mother when reading a poem to her boy of six, ventured to remark, "I'm afraid you can't understand it, dear," for which she got rather roughly snubbed by her little mas

one has given us a better account of the state of dream-like absorption in storyland than Thackeray. In one of his delightful "Roundabout Papers," he thus writes of the experiences of early boyhood: "Hush! I never read quite to the end of my first Scottish Chiefs. I couldn't. I peeped in an alarmed furtive manner at

for a story? and after you have satisfied his first request, he will ask for more, and if then you ar

ll they get undeceived seems to be shown by the respect which they pay to the details and even to the words. Woe to the unfortunate mother who in repeating one of the good stock nursery tales varies

self-created world new territory, in which he may wander and live blissful moments. This permanent occupation of storyland is shown in the child's impulse to bri

ree inventions of fairy and other tales. These at first, and for some time, have in them more of play

ma; he has dot (got) a bad leg". Then romancing, as he was now wont to do: "He dot on a very big 'orse, and he fell off on some great big stone, and he hurt his poor leg and he had to get a big stick. We must make it well." Then after a thoughtful pause: "Mamma, go and

d gnomes of fairy-tale, the generous but discriminating old gentleman who brings Christmas presents, as well as the beings fashioned by the more original sort of child for himself, these live on just like the people of the every-day w

ences among children in this respect are great. Yet I think it is safe to say that most children, and especially lonely children who have

lf passively in fancy dreams. But play, too, is to a large extent a product of