in
the glass too." He is pleased and satisfied. Nor are such answers useless,
as might at first be supposed. They give the child practice in the use of
language, and, if properly managed, they may be made the means of greatly
extending his knowledge of language and, by necessary consequence, of the
ideas and realities which language represents.

"Father," says Mary, as she is walking with her father in the garden, "what
makes some roses white and some red?" "It is very curious, is it not?" says
her father. "Yes, father, it is very curious indeed. What makes it so?"
"There must be _some_ cause for it" says her father. "And the apples that
grow on some trees are sweet, and on others they are sour. That is curious
too." "Yes, very curious indeed," says Mary. "The _leaves_ of trees seem to
be always green," continues her father, "though the flowers are of various
colors." "Yes, father," says Mary. "Except," adds her father, "when they
turn yellow, and red, and brown, in the fall of the year."

A conversation like this, without attempting any thing like an answer to
the question with which it commenced, is as satisfactory to the child, and
perhaps as useful in developing its powers and increasing its knowledge
of language, as any attempt to explain the phenomenon would be; and the
knowledge of this will make it easy for the mother to dispose of many a
question which might seriously interrupt her if she conceived it necessary
either to attempt a satisfactory explanation of the difficulty, or not to
answer it at all.

_Be always ready to say "I don't know_."

5. The mother should be always ready and willing to say "I don't know," in
answer to children's questions.

Parents and teachers are very often somewhat averse to this, lest, by
often confessing their own ignorance, they should lower themselves in the
estimation of their pupils or their children. So they feel bound to give
some kind of an explanation to every difficulty, in hopes that it may
satisfy the inquirer, though it does not satisfy themselves. But this is
a great mistake. The sooner that pupils and children understand that the
field of knowledge is utterly boundless, and that it is only a very small
portion of it that their superiors in age and attainment have yet explored,
the better for all concerned. The kind of superiority, in the estimation of
children, which it is chiefly desirable to attain, consists in their always
finding that the explanation which we