Observing Things 83 



Putting Two and Two Together. It is always 

 interesting to watch a child grow, to see its scope 

 of observation widen as the intelligence first begins 

 to operate, to see how the observation begins to 

 associate a few simple things together, and then 

 to see, further, how the imagination seizes upon 

 these associations and attempts to develop its own 

 power of controlling them. 



A lad of my acquaintance, whose family lived 

 in the city, had been watching the traveling cranes 

 at work on the subway excavation. That was 

 just at the beginning of the war. Pictures of sub- 

 marines were coming out in the papers from time 

 to time and some of these had come under the 

 boy's observation. One day, when he and I were 

 passing by the subway cut, he turned around to 

 me and said : 'I know now how they get the sub- 

 marines into the water." 



I asked him, "How?" 



He said : "They have a big crane at the edge 

 he water. They lift the submarines up, when 

 they are finished, and drop them in.'* 



Here was a good illustration of the method b; 



li we arrive at our knowledge. This 

 had seen the crane. It was associated in his n 



i lifting heavy, cumbersome pieces and running 



them out to where they were needed. He had 



seen pictures of the submarine. These pictures 



shown him that they were made of steel, were 



, heavy, and traveled under water. Evidently 



his mind had busied itself on the question of hou 



