Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/597

Rh survive in the counting out rhymes, in the charms and talismans and superstitions of children. One recalls the magic formula used by Tom Sawyer for driving away warts.

You got to go by yourself in the middle of the woods where you know there is a spunkwater stump, and just as it's midnight you back up against the stump and jam your hand in and say:

 Barley corn, barley corn, injun meal shorts, Spunkwater, spunkwater, swaller these warts

and then walk away quick eleven steps, with your eyes shut and then turn around three times and walk home without speaking to any one, because if you speak, the charm's busted.

The mental habits of the child seem like echoes from the remote past, recalling the life of the cave, the forest and the stream. The instinct exhibited in infancy, as well as in boyhood, to climb stairs, ladders, trees, lamp-posts, anything, reminds us of forest life; the hide-and-seek games which appeal so powerfully even to the youngest children recall the cave life of our ancestors, or at least some mode of existence in which concealment from enemies, whether human or animal, was the condition of survival; while the instinct of infants to gravitate toward the nearest pond or puddle, the wading, swimming, fishing, boating proclivities of every youngster, seem like a reminiscence of some time when our fathers lived near and by means of the water.

During a long period in the evolution of life among the higher animals and in the early history of man, the one all-important factor was speed, for upon it depended safety in flight from enemies and capture in pursuit. This ancient trait has persisted and survives to-day in a deep instinctive joy in speed, whether exhibited in running or coasting or skating or in the speed mania which lends such delight to motoring, flying, fast sailing and fast riding.

Again, the ancient life of pursuit and capture persists upon every playground in the familiar games of tag, blackman, pull-away, and a hundred others. Indeed, for the exhibition of this instinct, no organized game is necessary. Sudden playful pursuit and flight are seen wherever children are assembled. The ancient life of personal combat is mirrored in the plays of children in mimic fighting and wrestling. The passion of every boy for the bow and arrow, sling, sling-shot, gun or anything that will shoot, is merely the persistence of deep-rooted race habits, formed during ages of subsistence by these means.

There was a time when man lived in close relation with and dependence upon wild and domestic animals. This period is reflected in many forms in the child's life, in his animal books, his animal toys, his teddy bears, in his numerous animal plays. The former dependence of man