Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/186

174 saying, "No Nana (name for nurse) look at it till Sunday." And sure enough, when Sunday came and the pencil was restored to him, he promptly showed nurse his picture. This is an excellent observation full of suggestion as to the way in which a child's mind works. Among other things it seems to show pretty plainly that the little fellow looked on the nursery and all its belongings, including the nurse, during these three days as a place of disgrace, into which the privileges of the artist were not to enter. He was allowed the indulgence of drawing downstairs, but he had no right to exhibit his workmanship to the nurse, who was inseparably associated in his mind with the forbidden nursery drawing. Thus a process of genuine child-thought led to a self-instituted extension of the punishment.

A month later this child "pulled down a picture in the nursery"—the nursery walls seem to have had a fell attraction for him by standing on a sofa and tugging till the wire broke. He was alone at the time and very much frightened, though not hurt. He was soothed and told to leave the picture alone in future, but was not in any way rebuked. He seemed, however, to think that some punishment was necessary, for he presently asked whether he was going to have a certain favorite frock on that afternoon. He was told "No" (the reason being that the day was wet or something similar), and he said immediately, "Cause Neil pulled picture down?" Here, I think, we have unmistakable evidence of an expectation of punishment as the fit and proper sequel in a case which, although it did not exactly resemble those already branded by punishment, was felt in a vague way to be disorderly and naughty.

Such stories of expectation of punishment are capped by instances of punishment actually inflicted by the child on himself. I believe it is not uncommon for a child, when possessed by a sense of having been naughty, to object to having nice things at table, on the ground that previously on a like occasion he was deprived of them. But the most curious instance of this moral rigor toward self which I have met with is the following: A girl of nine had been naughty, and was very sorry for her misbehavior. She was noticed coming to her lesson limping, and remarked that she felt very uncomfortable. Being asked by her governess what was the matter with her, she said, "It was very naughty of me to disobey you, so I put my right shoe on to my left foot and my left shoe on to my right foot."

The facts here briefly illustrated seem to me to show that there is in the child from the first a rudiment of true law-abidingness. And this is a force of the greatest consequence to the disciplinarian. It is something which takes side in the child's breast with the reasonable governor and the laws which he or