Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/607

Rh child's mind; we see intelligence and, to some extent, also character. Thus, before there can be the faithful mimetic play of our little coachman, there must have been close observation and memory of what was observed. On the other hand, that most useful quality of intelligence which we call resource and invention comes out clearly in all the freer and more original sorts of play. Again, while all children are players—did not Victor Hugo rightly make the little body-starved and mind-starved Fantine conserve the play instinct?—they exhibit many and even profound differences of mind and character in their play. How unlike the girl's passive, dreamy play—as when sitting and holding her doll—to the more active boy's play, with its vigorous fightings, its arm-aching draggings of furniture! How different, again, the inchoate idealess play of a stupid child with the contents of a Noah's ark from the well-considered, finished, and varied play of a bright, intelligent child with the same material! Curious differences of taste, too, and even of moral instinct reflect themselves in the play of children. There is a quaint precocity of the practical instinct, the impulse to make one's self useful, in some children, which is apt to come out in their play. The little boy referred to above, who would spend a whole wet afternoon "painting" the furniture, must have had a decided bent toward useful work. Other children are no less quaintly precocious in the matter of morals, laying down commands on their dolls, punishing them for being naughty, and so forth—all with the appearance of a real and earnest conscientiousness.

While the forms of imaginative activity in play are thus selectively determined by individual aptitudes and dispositions, they will, of course, throughout remain dependent on the special experiences and fields of observation. Play is largely imitative of what has been experienced by the child, seen by him, or told him by others. The richer the surroundings, the fuller the sources of instruction, the more elaborate and various can the play representation become. Boys' play is often an imitation of the doings of their fathers and others—that is to say, when, as in the case of the farmer, the engineer, or the soldier, the paternal vocation lends itself to an interesting kind of play action. The sons of literary men do not, so far as I have heard, render their sires this flattering attention. Possibly, now that women's occupations also are getting differentiated, girls will be found to follow in their play the special lines of activity of their respective mothers.

Enough has probably been said to show how interesting a subject for study is offered us in children's play. Here, as has been well said, we seem to catch the child in his own world, acting out his own impulses without stimulus, guidance, or restraint from