Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/635

Rh to make parallel lines of plane and solid figures with a corresponding number of sides or angles, then to abstract the Greek numerals tri, tetra, penta, hexa, etc., found to belong to both columns, and set this in the center, with the syllable gon on one side, and hedron on the other. An hour was required to complete the setting out of these figures, and arranging these titles with movable letters, which for the first time the child learned to use for spelling. The exercise was, of course, repeated again and again, until every step was perfectly familiar. From the beginning the child had no difficulty in connecting the plane and solid figures, nor in learning the numerals appropriate to each. The new effort at abstraction and classification was at first somewhat hard, but soon became easy. The facility with which the impression of forms may be made upon a child's mind, when this is as yet uncrowded by notions on the other qualities of objects, was shown by a little incident at this period. A few weeks after having made her first acquaintance with the oblate, she saw at dinner for the first time some small stewed onions. "Oh!" she exclaimed, "they have brought us some oblates for dinner." Another day, when she accidentally pulled the cord of a window-shade in a certain position she observed that she had thus made "two scalene triangles." Looking at the ceiling above a lamp, she called to me to notice how the light made three "beautiful concentric circles."

One other study during the year was made upon the intrinsic meaning of words. In the course of some observations on plants the child had learned to recognize the ovary and ovule, and to herself dissect them out of a flower. When this had been done, the analogy between the vegetable ovule and chicken-egg or ovum was easily pointed out, and the relation of the latter to the geometric ovoid. The four objects were then placed in a row on the table, the names of each spelled with movable letters, and then the common root ov described and taken out. The important and fundamental idea was thus grasped that there was an intrinsic meaning to at least some words, and also that objects associated by a common name, whose specific variations were of subordinate importance, must be classed together as deeply related, notwithstanding superficial difference of aspect. But this idea, once distinctly enunciated and understood, was then set aside for a season. That the idea was understood, I tested in the following way: At table the child remarked that a particular potato was "shaped like an egg." "What shall we then call it?" I asked. "An ovoid," was the reply. "Very good. Do you know what I thought you might call it?" "An ovum," she answered, with an air of mischievous triumph. "And why did you not?" "Because it is not an egg, but only shaped like an egg" I tempted the child with the suggestion that she should tease the waiter by asking him to bring us some ovules instead of eggs; but the instinctive modesty of childhood recoiled from the pedantic proposition.