Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/184

172 of courtesy and the like. No trait is better marked in the normal child than the impulse to subject others to his own disciplinary system. In truth, children are for the most part particularly alert disciplinarians. With what amusing severity are they wont to lay down the law to their dolls, and their animal playmates, subjecting-them to precisely the same prohibitions and punishments as those to which they themselves are subject! Nor do they stop here. They enforce the duties just as courageously on their human elders. A mite of eighteen months went up to her elder sister who was crying, and with perfect mimicry of the nurse's corrective manner said, "Hush, hush! papa!" pointing at the same time to the door. The little girl M, when twenty-two months old, was disappointed because a certain Mr. G did not call. In the evening she said, "Mr. D not did turn was very naughty. Mr. D have to be whipped." So natural and inevitable to the intelligence of a child does it seem that the system of restraints, rebukes, punishments under which he lives should have universal validity.

This judicial bent of the child is a curious one, and often develops a priggish fondness for setting others morally straight. Small boys have to endure much in this way from the hands of slightly older sisters proficient in matters of law and delighting to enforce the moralities. But sometimes the sisters lapse into naughtiness and then the small boys have their chance. They too can on such occasions be priggish if not downright hypocritical. A little boy had been quarreling with his sister, named Muriel, just before going to bed. When he was undressed he knelt down to say his prayers, Muriel sitting near and listening. He prayed (audibly) in this wise: "Please, God, make Muriel a good girl," then looked up and said in an angry voice, "Do you hear that, Muriel?" and after this digression resumed his petition. I believe fathers, on reading family prayers, have been known to apply portions of Scripture in this personal manner to particular members of the family; and it is even possible that extempore prayers have been invented, as by this little prig of a boy, for the purpose of administering a sort of back-handed moral blow to an erring neighbor.

This mania for correction shows itself too in relation to the authorities themselves. A collection of rebukes and expositions of moral precept supplied by children to their erring parents would be amusing and suggestive. As was illustrated above, a child is especially keen to spy fault in his governors when they are themselves administering authority. Here is another example: A boy of two—the moral instruction of parents by the child begins betimesbedtimes [sic]—would not go to sleep when bidden to do so by his father and mother. At length the father, losing patience,