Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/610

592 singing. When four or six months old almost all children like to be sung to, and many try to prattle. They please themselves by making a noise.

Smell.—Children for a long time show no sensibility to good and bad odors. At ten or fifteen months their sense of smell is very lively.

Taste.—The emotions connected with taste are for a long time the most lively.

Fear.—Fear is early manifested. A babe of two months will make a face, cry, and recoil upon the bosom of its nurse, if one sneezes or cries out near it.

Jealousy and Anger.—A little girl, nearly three months old, would frown, make wry faces, kick, and cry, on seeing another babe on her mother's breast. A little boy, on the second day, when dressed, gesticulated in a manner painful to see, and especially when his arms were put in the sleeves.

Emotions vary with the Objects.—A little child eleven months old was pleased to hold the nursing-bottle, and to eat various foods; he loved to play; he showed affection for his parents, and made some difference in this respect between different persons that he liked. He showed aversion for some inanimate objects (hammer syringe); for a little black barking dog; and for the caresses of a neighboring child seven years old, who had played him more than one trick. The organization of children being more feeble than ours, their emotions are short-lived, and things the most disagreeable or painful do not long remain so.

Animal Sympathy.—Children love animals, but in a purely egotistic fashion. A child six months old, left alone with a turtle, half tore off one of its feet, and when his nurse came was pulling at another with all his might.

Human Sympathy.—One child a year old, coming home after a month's absence, paid no attention to a cat and dog that he knew well, but with a smile reached out his arms to an old servant. Children have only a germ of true sympathy. A little child four years old lost one of his dearest companions. The father of the dead boy took him on his knee while sobbing. The child escaped, frisked about for a little, and, coming back to the afflicted father, said, "Now Peter is dead, you will give me his horse and drum, will you not?" Sometimes more sensibility is manifested: a baby of sixteen months would cry to the shedding of hot tears on seeing his father take a shower-bath. The same child at the same time was the terror of cats.

Cries and Tears.—During its first weeks the babe sheds no tears. In a child seventy-seven days old rapid and short inspirations approached to sobbing; in another child of one hundred and thirty-eight days M. Perez observed a distinct sob.