STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 587 



child's mind ; we see intelligence and, to some extent, also charac- 

 ter. Thus, before there can be the faithful mimetic play of our 

 little coachman, there must have been close observation and 

 memory of what was observed. On the other hand, that most 

 useful quality of intelligence which we call resource and inven- 

 tion comes out clearly in all the freer and more original sorts of 

 play. Again, while all children are players did not Victor 

 Hugo rightly make the little body-starved and mind-starved Fan- 

 tine conserve the play instinct ? they exhibit many and even pro- 

 found differences of mind and character in their play. How un- 

 like the girl's passive, dreamy play as when sitting and holding 

 her doll to the more active boy's play, with its vigorous fight- 

 ings, its arm-aching draggings of furniture ! How different, again, 

 the inchoate idealess play of a stupid child with the contents of a 

 Noah's ark from the well-considered, finished, and varied play of 

 a bright, intelligent child with the same material ! Curious dif- 

 ferences of taste, too, and even of moral instinct reflect themselves 

 in the play of children. There is a quaint precocity of the prac- 

 tical instinct, the impulse to make one's self useful, in some chil- 

 dren, which is apt to come out in their play. The little boy 

 referred to above, who would spend a whole wet afternoon " paint- 

 ing " the furniture, must have had a decided bent toward useful 

 work. Other children are no less quaintly precocious in the mat- 

 ter of morals, laying down commands on their dolls, punishing 

 them for being naughty, and so forth all with the appearance of 

 a real and earnest conscientiousness. 



While the forms of imaginative activity in play are thus 

 selectively determined by individual aptitudes and dispositions, 

 they will, of course, throughout remain dependent on the special 

 experiences and fields of observation. Play is largely imitative of 

 what has been experienced by the child, seen by him, or told him 

 by others. The richer the surroundings, the fuller the sources of 

 instruction, the more elaborate and various can the play represen- 

 tation become. Boys' play is often an imitation of the doings of 

 their fathers and others that is to say, when, as in the case of the 

 farmer, the engineer, or the soldier, the paternal vocation lends 

 itself to an interesting kind of play action. The sons of lit- 

 erary men do not, so far as I have heard, render their sires this 

 flattering attention. Possibly, now that women's occupations 

 also are getting differentiated, girls will be found to follow 

 in their play the special lines of activity of their respective 

 mothers. 



Enough has probably been said to show how interesting a sub- 

 ject for study is offered us in children's play. Here, as has been 

 well said, we seem to catch the child in his own world, acting out 

 his own impulses without stimulus, guidance, or restraint from 



