Page:How to show pictures to children (IA howtoshowpictur00hurl).pdf/33

 in a child’s likes and dislikes. All boys and girls have a strong conservative element in their make-up, the girl clinging tenaciously to her battered old dolls, and the boy loyal to his dismembered dogs and horses. At the same time they are always teasing for some new toy or amusement. So with pictures. At times they seem interested only in something familiar, and again they utterly refuse to look at the “tiresome old” picture book they “know by heart.” I have a box of miscellaneous prints which tests the caliber of many an unsuspecting little visitor. While I am busy at my desk, this box is explored, and the discoverer brings me the special treasures selected. I remember one little girl whose amusement consisted in counting out the pictures she herself happened to have. Another surprised me very much by finding a few old photographs I had entirely forgotten. They were Nativity subjects by some early Italian painters, quite archaic in style and supposedly unattractive to a child. But in this case they were the reminder of a happy hour in the schoolroom, and the child poured forth to me the story of the manger as she had heard it from her teacher. All the charming modern children’s pictures counted for nothing beside these which suggested a familiar train of thought. Children of a different temperament choose the striking and unusual things to have them explained. “What is the giant [St. Christopher] going to do with the baby on his shoulder?” “Why docs a little boy [Prince Charles] wear a lace bonnet, or a little girl [Penelope Boothby] lace mittens?”