394 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



we may call the adult's fallacy, the tendency to judge children by 

 grown-up standards, frequently shows itself in an expectation 

 that their laughter will follow the directions of our own. I re- 

 member having made the mistake of putting those delightful 

 books, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, into the hands of a 

 small boy with a considerable sense of fun, and having been hu- 

 miliated at discovering that there was no response. Children's 

 fun is of a very elemental character. They are mostly tickled, I 

 suspect, by the spectacle of some upsetting of the proprieties, 

 some confusion of the established distinctions of rank. Dress, as 

 we have seen, has an enormous symbolic value for the child's 

 mind, and any confusion here is apt to be specially laughter-pro- 

 voking. One child between three and four was convulsed at the 

 sight of his baby bib fastened round the neck of his bearded sire. 

 There is, too, a considerable element of rowdiness in children's 

 sense of the comical, as may be seen by the enduring popularity 

 of the spectacle of Punch's successful misdemeanors and bravings 

 of the legal authority. 



Since children are apt to take spectacles with an exacting seri- 

 ousness, it becomes interesting to note how the two moods, realis- 

 tic stickling for correctness, and rollicking hilarity at the sight 

 of the disorderly, behave in relation one to another. More facts 

 are needed on this point. It is probable that we have here to do 

 in part with a permanent difference of temperament. There are 

 serious, matter-of-fact little minds which are shocked by a kind 

 of spectacle or narrative that would give boundless delight to a 

 more elastic, fun-loving spirit. But discarding these permanent 

 differences of disposition, I think that in general the sense of fun, 

 the delight in the topsy-turviness of things, is apt to develop later 

 than the serious realistic attitude already referred to. Here, too, 

 it is probable that the evolution of the individual follows that of 

 the race : the solemnities of custom and ritual weigh so heavily 

 at first on the savage mind that there is no chance for sprightly 

 Laughter to show himself. However this be, most young chil- 

 dren appear to be unable to appreciate true comedy where the in- 

 congruous coexists with and takes on one half of its charm from 

 serious surroundings. Their laughter is best called forth by a 

 broadly farcical show in which all serious rules are set at naught. 



Of no less interest in this attitude of the child-mind toward 

 the representations by art of human character and action are the 

 first rude manifestations of the feeling for the tragic side of life. 

 A child of four or six is far from realizing the divine necessity 

 which controls our mortal lives. Yet he will display a certain 

 crude feeling for thrilling situation, exciting adventure, and 

 something, too, of a sympathetic interest in the woes of mortals, 

 quadrupeds as well as bipeds. The action, the situation, may 



