Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/181

Rh of order. And this would seem to show that it can not wholly be set down to the influence of such government. It seems rather to be a spontaneous extension of the realm of rule or law.

This impulse to extend rule appears more plainly in many of the little ceremonial observances of the child. Very charmingly is this respect for rule exhibited in relation to his animals, dolls, and other pets. Not only are they required to do things in a proper orderly manner, but people have to treat them with due deference.

"Every night," writes a mother of her boy, aged two years and seven months, "after I have kissed and shaken hands with him, I have to kiss his 'boy,' that is his doll, who sleeps with him, and to shake its two hands; also to shake the four hoofs of a tiny horse which lies at the foot of his cot. When all this has been gone through he stands up and entreats 'more tata please, more tata'—i. e., 'kiss me again and say more good nights.' These customs of his with regard to kissing are peculiar to himself: he kisses his 'boy' (doll), also pictures of horses, dogs, cocks, and hens, and he puts his head against us to he kissed; but he will only shake hands and will not kiss people himself; he reserves his kisses for what he seems to feel inferior things. We kiss our boy, he kisses his; but he insists upon being shaken hands with for his part. If other children come to play, he gives them toys, watches them with delight, tries to give them rides on his 'go-go's,' but does not kiss them; though he will stroke their hair, he does not return their kisses. It seems to me that he regards it as an action to be reserved for an inferior thing."

I have quoted at length this careful bit of maternal observation because it seems to indicate so clearly a spontaneous extension of a custom. The practice of the mother and father in kissing him was generalized into a rule of ceremony in the treatment of all inferiors.

This subject of childish ceremonial is a curious one and deserves a more careful study. It is hardly less interesting than the origin and survival of ceremonial as elucidated by Mr. Herbert Spencer and others. The respect for orderly procedure on all serious occasions, and especially at church, is as exacting as that of any savage tribe. Punch illustrated this some years ago by a picture of a little girl asking her mamma if Mr. So-and-so was not a very wicked man because he didn't "smell his hat" when he came into his pew.

This jealous regard for ceremony and the proprieties of behavior is seen in the enforcement of rules of politeness by children, who will extend them far beyond the scope intended by the parent. A delightful instance of this fell under my own observation as I was walking on Hampstead Heath. It was a spring