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that response can be relied upon.

In short, the efficient educator will justify the high adventure of democracy by preserving the democratic consciousness and harmonizing free self expression with social cooperation.

TRUTHFULNESS

"And Heaven's rich instincts in me grew, As effortless as woodland nooks

Send violets up and paint them blue."

LOWELL.

NEARLY every intelligent mother knows that truthfulness in a young child is not identical with the ability to state facts accurately.

Impressions produce effects upon the child mind out of all proportion to their magnitude and out of proportion to effects produced by like impressions on the minds of older people. A child says that he saw a pig-"a teeny, weeny little pigabout as big as this" (indicating a portion of his little finger). He is describing the effect in his own mind of comparing diminutive size with the huge bulk of the "big mother pig.'

We understand that children cannot make correct estimates of size, number, distance, etc., because they have not had the experience that is synonymous with sense training. So we wait for the judgment that is solely the product of sense experience. We remember, too, that the child

has not the language with which to express the result of his observations in terms of adult understanding, and we have patience with his inaccuracies.

Again, mothers have come to smile with loving tolerance while children relate what is real only in their imagination. And sometimes, perhaps, we would fain prolong the period when fairies, and brownies, and pixies dwell with our little ones. We almost dread the on-coming literalism, that will sooner or later make it true that,

"A primrose on the river's brim, a yellow primrose is to him,

And nothing more."

It is interesting to watch the transitional phases in that period of the child's development when the subjective is surrendering more and more to the edict of the objective. A little boy of three, pursued, with stumbling baby feet, but with ever renewed persistence, the hens in the back yard. His victims forever eluded him with no inconvenience to themselves, but one day imagination made real to him his burning desire and he felt himself the valiant captor of his prey. He related with honest enthusiasm his experience!

"One long time ago this to-morrow, I caught

a chicken. Joe chopped his head off and we ate the outside of him." Gratification was marred by no misgiving at this age.

At five the same child told about a bear which he said our next neighbors had in a cage in their barn. "It's just like the bears in the funny papers, only this one is real," he declared. "Are you sure that you saw it?" inquired his elders. "No, I ain't sure I saw it, I just saw it." "Would we see it if we went over there and looked in the barn?" was the further inquiry. The child seemed to ponder this. "Maybe they'd have hunted it and shot it, and cut it up and ate it by this time," he said finally. It was plain that recollection was witnessing to the fact that his imagination sometimes played him false, or that the subjective could not always be relied upon to correspond with the objective, even though it seemed as real.

We may trust the purely fanciful to dissipate itself, but those fancies which have a part foundation in real events may furnish us occasions for helping the child establish his mental connections with the objective world.

It is our duty to help him correct his inaccuracies of judgment, not however with implied reproach for them. If he says there were a hundred people in a certain place, when there are only eight or ten,

we may perhaps get him to name over the persons separately until he has reduced them to their actual number. Likewise his "teeny, weeny, little pig," of little finger fame, may be made to assume its proper proportions by the aid of substituted comparisons. Rectitude of expression may be learned as dovetailing is learned, and it should be taught as impartially, and impersonally, and in as "matter-of-fact" a manner, thus leaving undisturbed the child's sweet unconsciousness of self.

We are coming now in our little dissertation on truthfulness, to the point which most mothers consider crucial to the subject, namely, the inclination of a child to sometimes consciously and willfully misrepresent facts.

If we carefully consider, we shall have to admit that almost the only occasions when a child is consciously untruthful are those when fear of punishment restrains him from telling the truth.

A mother asked the Wise Man how she might train her child to tell the truth. "Nothing could be simpler," said the Wise Man, "just let him tell it." And surely no virtue could be said to flourish more readily by so purely a negative process. Mothers who have entertained guests and big sisters who have entertained beaus, can frequently recall when truthfulness, unhindered, ran rampant, spreading itself like a green bay tree

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