Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/141

Rh coat with a row of pieces of coal down the front for buttons. Six placed a hat on the head with no other effort to represent clothing while the rest made no effort whatever to indicate clothing. There was considerable effort to put content into the forms and express ideas with them. Father and son were represented by tall and short forms. Some children made whole families–the father, mother and children; put a pipe in the father's mouth to distinguish him, and a broom into the mother's hand to distinguish her while the children were made smaller and of different sizes. Soldiers were indicated by placing long sticks on their shoulders for muskets. They were usually stationed near a fort to guard it. Various characters such as old King Cole, Santa Claus, and others were given some distinguishing mark.

The tendency to make caricatures was noticeable. Some were dressed up like scarecrows, others had long sticks in their mouths for cigars or pipes, and again others had old hats and in one case a dented derby in such a way that it expressed their sense of the ludicrous. Several different attitudes were manifested toward these creations of their imagination. Some called it their teacher and snowballed it. Others fixed it all up with hat, broom, pipe in mouth, and then were afraid of it at night. Again others used the snow figure as a target and shouted with delight when the nose, arm or head was knocked off. One boy is quoted as saying that he was sorry when it melted and left nothing but a puddle of water.

Some of the children made their own forms in the snow by lying down flat and placing their arms out straight. They took great delight in seeing their own forms in this way, as the following quotations will show; F., 8. "Made a picture of myself by lying backwards in the snow." M., 8, lay down in snow to make his print in snow. This effort to see their own form probably arises from a desire to get better acquainted with themselves. Angels were also made by lying in the snow and moving arms and hands up and down in the snow to make wings. Whole rows of these were made side by side. Others made like figures and called them butterflies. Again others made forms of cats, dogs, bears, lions, tigers; drew pictures with stick, and wrote names.

The data do not permit an accurate treatment of the ages of these children but the extreme limits are pretty clearly marked. Of those children whose ages were indicated none were below and none above 13 who participated in making snow men. Of the 82 whose ages were given 6 were 5 years old, 12 were years old, 16 were 7 years of age, 14 were 8, 7 were 9 years old, 12 10 years, 7 were n years, 8 were 12 years. It would have been a very interesting thing if the data had been given