Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/11

Rh itself in the stare, the grave look, and in such movements as turning away and hiding the face against the nurse's or mother's shoulder. In severer forms it leads to trembling and to wild shrieking. Changes of color also occur. It is commonly said that great fear produces paleness; but, according to one of my correspondents, a child may show fear by his face turning scarlet. Fear, if not very intense, leads to voluntary movements—as turning away, putting the object away, or going away. In its more violent forms, however, it paralyzes the child. It is desirable that parents should carefully observe and describe the first signs of fear in their children.

It may be well to begin our study of fear by a reference to startling effects. As is well known, sudden and loud sounds, as that of a door banging, will give a shock to an infant in the first weeks of life, which, though not amounting to fear, is its progenitor. A clearer manifestation occurs when a new and unfamiliar sound calls forth the grave look, the trembling lip, and possibly the fit of crying. Darwin gives an excellent example of this. He had, he tells us, been accustomed to make all sorts of sudden noises with his boy, aged four months and a half, which were well received; but one day, having introduced a new sound—that of a loud snoring—he found that the child was quite upset, bursting out into a fit of crying.

As this incident suggests, it is not every new sound which is thus disconcerting to the little stranger. Sudden sharp sounds seem to be especially disliked, as those of a dog's bark. Loud and voluminous sounds, too, have a terrifying effect. The big noise of a factory, of a steamship, of a passing train, are among the causes alleged by my correspondents of this early startling and terrifying effect. My little girl when taken into the country at the age of nine months, though she liked the animals she saw on the whole, showed signs of fear on hearing the bleating of the sheep, by seeking shelter against the nurse's shoulder. So strong is this effect of suddenness and volume of sound that even musical sounds often excite some alarm at first. "He (a boy of four months) cried when he first heard the piano," writes one lady, and this is but a sample of many observations. A child of five months and a half showed such a horror of a banjo that it would scream if it were played or only touched. Preyer's boy, at sixteen months, was apparently alarmed when his father, in order to entertain him, produced a pure musical tone by rubbing a drinking-glass. He remarks that this same sound had been produced when the child was four months old without any ill effects.

This last fact suggests that such shrinkings from sound may