STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 789 



Owing to these difficulties the little learner is always drifting 

 into misunderstanding of words. Such misapprehensions will 

 arise in a passive way by the mere play of association which 

 attaches the word to some features of the particular object or set 

 of circumstances with reference to which the word happens to be 

 used in the child's hearing. In this way, for example, general 

 terms become terribly restricted in range, as when the child sup- 

 poses that pudding is something made of milk, the church is a 

 building with a spire and a yew tree, that ragged is having no 

 shoes and socks, and so forth. Such a going off the track to side 

 and accidental features seems to be reflected in much of children's 

 quaint misapplications of more difficult words, as when a little 

 boy of six used " consulted " for serious, talking of a thrush as 

 looking consulted, and of people looking "concerned and con- 

 sulted." 



With these losings of the verbal road through associative by- 

 paths may be taken the host of misapprehensions into which chil- 

 dren are apt to fall through the ambiguities of our words and ex- 

 pressions, and our short and elliptical modes of speaking. Thus 

 an American child, noting that children were " half price " at a 

 certain show, wanted his mother to get a baby, now that babies 

 were cheap.* With this may be compared the following : Jean 

 Ingelow tells us she can well remember how sad she was made by 

 her father telling her one day after dancing her on his knee that 

 he must put her down, as he " had a bone in his leg." f Much 

 misapprehension arises, too, from our figurative use of language, 

 which the little listener is apt to interpret in a very literal way. 

 It would be worth knowing what odd renderings the child-brain 

 has given to such expressions as " an upright man," " a fish out of 

 water," and the like. 



In addition to these comparatively passive misapprehensions 

 there are others which are the outcome of an intellectual effort, 

 the endeavor to penetrate into the mystery of some new and puz- 

 zling words or expression. Many of us have had our special hor- 

 rors, our Mtes noires among words, which have tormented us for 

 months and years. I remember how I was plagued by the word 

 " wean," the explanation of which was very properly, no doubt, 

 denied me by the authorities, and by what quaint fancies I tried 

 to fill in a meaning. 



As with words, so with whole expressions and sayings. What 

 queer renderings the child-mind has given to Scripture language ! 

 Mr. James Payne tells us that he knew a boy who for years sub- 



* Worcester collection, p. 21. 



f Cf. the account Goltz gives of the anxiety he felt as a child on hearing that his 

 uvula (Zap/en) had fallen down, op. cit., p. 261. 



