Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/78

74 showed Helen the cake and spelled 'c-a-k-e' in her hand, holding the cake toward her. Of course she wanted it and tried to take it; but I spelled the word again and patted her hand. She made the letters rapidly, and I gave her the cake." Meaningless as this finger-play must have been to the seven-year-old child, it was hardly more so than

other of the arbitrary relations between causes and effects that a child readily accepts as part of the logic of reality. But the magic touch that was to supply 'the light that failed' was not far off. The really serious obstacle was the difficulty of sustaining human relations with this willful bit of humanity, and of enforcing discipline. After a few