A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 01 AN~ IXFANT. 



340 



recognized him, and mentioned a whole string of 

 events which had occurred while visiting him, 

 and which certainly had never been mentioned 

 in the interval. 



Moral Sense. — The first sign of moral sense 

 was noticed at the age of nearly thirteen months. 

 I said, " Doddy " (his nickname) " won't give 

 poor papa a kiss — naughty Doddy ! " These 

 words, without doubt, made him feel slightly un- 

 comfortable ; and at last, when I had returned to 

 my chair, he protruded his lips as a sign that he 

 was ready to kiss me ; and he then shook his 

 hand in an angry manner until I came and re- 

 ceived his kiss. Nearly the same little scene re- 

 curred in a few days, and the reconciliation 

 seemed to give him so much satisfaction that sev- 

 eral times afterward he pretended to be angry 

 and slapped me, and then insisted on giving me a 

 kiss. So that here we have a touch of the dra- 

 matic art, which is so strongly pronounced in 

 most young children. About this time it became 

 easy to work on his feelings, and make him do 

 whatever was wanted. When two years and 

 three months old he gave his last bit of ginger- 

 bread to his little sister, and then cried out, with 

 high self-approbation, " kind Doddy, kind Dod- 

 dy ! " Two months later he became extremely 

 sensitive to ridicule, and was so suspicious that 

 he often thought people who were laughing and 

 talking together were laughing at him. A little 

 later (two years and seven and a half months old) 

 I met him coming out of the dining-room with 

 his eyes unnaturally bright, and an odd, unnatu- 

 ral or affected manner, so that I went into the 

 room to see who was there, and found that he 

 had been taking pounded sugar, which he had 

 been told not to do. As he had never been in 

 any way punished, his odd manner certainly was 

 not due to fear, and I suppose it was pleasurable 

 excitement struggling with conscience. A fort- 

 night afterward I met him coming out of the 

 same room, and he was eying his pinafore, which 

 he had carefully rolled up ; and again his manner 

 was so odd that I determined to "see what was 

 within his pinafore, notwithstanding that he said 

 there was nothing, and repeatedly commanded 

 me to "go away," and I found it stained with 

 pickle-juice ; so that here was carefully-planned 

 deceit. As this child was educated solely by 

 Avorking on his good feelings, he soon became as 

 truthful, open, and tender, as any one could de- 

 sire. 



Unconsciousness, Shyness. — No one can have 

 attended to very young children without being 

 struck at the unabashed manner in which thev 



fixedly stare without blinking their eyes at a new 

 face ; an old person can look in this manner only 

 at an animal or inanimate object. This, I believe, 

 is the result of young children not thiuking in the 

 least about themselves, and therefore not being 

 in the least shy, though they are sometimes 

 afraid of strangers. I saw the first symptom of 

 shyness in my child when nearly two years and 

 three months old : this was shown toward my- 

 self, after an absence of ten days from home, 

 chiefly by his eyes being kept slightly averted 

 from mine; but he soon came and sat on my 

 knee and kissed me, aud all trace of shyness dis- 

 appeared. 



Means of Communication. — The noise of cry- 

 ing, or rather of squalling, as no tears are shed 

 for a long time, is, of course, uttered in an in- 

 stinctive manner, but serves to show that there is 

 suffering. After a time the sound differs accord- 

 ing to the cause, such as hunger or pain. This 

 was noticed when this infant was eleven weeks 

 old, and I believe at an earlier age in another in- 

 fant. Moreover, he appeared soon to learn to 

 begin crying voluntarily, or to wrinkle his face in 

 the manner proper to the occasion, so as to show 

 that he wanted something. "When forty-six days 

 old, he first made little noises without any mean- 

 ing to please himself, and these soon became 

 varied. An incipient laugh was observed on the 

 113th day, but much earlier in another infant. 

 At this date I thought, as already remarked, that 

 he began to try to imitate sounds, as he certainly 

 did at a considerably later period. When five 

 and a half months old he uttered an articulate 

 sound, " Da ! " but without any meaning attached 

 to it. When a little over a year old he used gest- 

 ures to explain his wishes. To give a simple in- 

 stance, he picked up a bit of paper, and, giving 

 it to me, pointed to the fire, as he had often seen 

 and liked to see paper burned. At exactly the 

 age of a year he made the great step of invent- 

 ing a word for food — namely, mum ; but what 

 led him to it I did not discover. And now, in- 

 stead of beginning to cry when he was hungry, 

 he used this word in a demonstrative manner or 

 as a verb, implying " Give me food." This word, 

 therefore, corresponds with ham as used by M. 

 Taine's infant at the later age of fourteen months. 

 But he also used mum as a substantive of wide 

 signification ; thus he called sugar shu-mum, and 

 a little later, after he had learned the word black, 

 he called liquorice hlack-shu-mum — black-sugar- 

 food. 



I was particularly struck with the fact that 

 when asking for food by the word mum he gave 



