Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/676

660 up rarely, and sometimes, as it looks to us, capriciously. Illness and temporary removal are a common occasion for the appearances of a deeper tenderness in the young heart. A little boy of three spontaneously brought his story book to his mother when she lay in bed ill; and the same child used to follow her about after her recovery with all the devotion of a little knight.

Very quaint and pretty, too, are the first attempts of the child at consolation. A little German girl, aged two and a half, had just lost her brother, and seemed very indifferent for some days. She then began to reflect and to ask about her playmate. On seeing her mother's distress she proceeded in truly childish fashion to comfort her: "Never, mind mamma, you will get a better boy. He was a ragamuffin" ("Er war ein Lump"). The coexistence of an almost barbarous indifference for the dead brother with practical sympathy for the living mother is characteristic here.

A deeper and more thoughtful sympathy comes with years and reflective power. Thought about the overhanging terror, death, is sometimes the awakener of this. "Are you old, mother?" asked a boy of five. "Why?" she answered. "Because," he continued, "the older you are the nearer you are to dying." This child had once before said he hoped his mother would not die before him, and this suggests that the thought of his own forlorn condition was in his mind here; yet we may hope that there was something of disinterested concern too.

This early consideration frequently takes the practical form of helpfulness. A child loves nothing better than to assist you in little household occupations; and though love of activity and the pleasure of imitating, no doubt, count for much in these cases we can, I think, safely set down something to the wish to be of use. This inference seems justified by the fact that such practical helpfulness is not always imitative. A little boy of two years and one month happened to overhear his nurse say to herself, "I wish that Anne would remember to fill the nursery boiler." "He listened and presently trotted off, found the said Anne doing a distant grate, pulled her by the apron, saying, 'Nanna, Nanna!' (come to nurse). She followed, surprised and puzzled, the child pulling all the way, till, having got her into the nursery, he pointed to the boiler, adding, 'Go dare, go dare,' so that the girl comprehended and did as he bade her."

With this practical "utilitarian" sympathy there goes a wish to please in other ways. Sometimes this shows itself in a dainty courtesy, as when a little girl, aged three and a quarter, petitioned her mother in this wise: "Please, mamma, will you pin this with the greatest pleasure?" Regard for another's feelings was surely never more charmingly expressed than in the prayer that in