re
that will not suggest to a person possessed of ordinary ingenuity an
endless number of talks to interest and amuse the child. To take an extreme
case, suppose the picture is a rude pencil drawing of a post, and nothing
besides. You can imagine a boy hidden behind the post, and you can call to
him, and finally obtain an answer from him, and have a long talk with him
about his play and who he is hiding from, and what other way he has of
playing with his friend. Or you can talk with the post directly. Ask him
where he came from, who put him in the ground, and what he was put in the
ground for, and what kind of a tree he was when he was a part of a tree
growing in the woods; and, following the subject out, the conversation may
be the means of not only amusing the child for the moment, but also
of gratifying his curiosity, and imparting a great amount of useful
information to him which will materially aid in the development of his
powers.

Or you may ask the post whether he has any relatives, and he may reply that
he has a great many cousins. He has some cousins that live in the city, and
they are called lamp-posts, and their business is to hold lamps to light
people along the streets; and he has some other cousins who stand in a long
row and hold up the telegraph-wire to carry messages from one part of the
world to another; and so on without end. If all this may done by means of a
rude representation of a simple post, it may easily be seen that no picture
which the child can possibly bring can fail to serve as a subject for such
conversations.

Some mothers may, perhaps, think it must require a great deal of ingenuity
and skill to carry out these ideas effectively in practice, and that is
true; or rather, it is true that there is in it scope for the exercise of
a great deal of ingenuity and skill, and even of genius, for those who
possess these qualities; but the degree of ingenuity required for a
commencement in this method is very small, and that necessary for complete
success in it is very easily acquired.

_Personification of Inanimate Objects_.

It will at once occur to the mother that any inanimate object may be
personified in this way and addressed as a living and intelligent being.
Your child is sick, I will suppose, and is somewhat feverish and fretful.
In adjusting his dress you prick him a little with a pin, and the pain
and annoyance acting on his morbid sensibilities bring out expressions of
irritation a