h they did not know. Do you think that he did
right or wrong?"

The child, who now had rather more the expression of intelligence in
his countenance, than he had when the same question had been put to
him after the former statement of the case, immediately answered, that
he "thought the merchant had done wrong, that he should have told the
people that more ships were to come in the morning." Several different
opinions were given afterwards by other children, and grown people who
were asked the same question; and what had been an unintelligible
story, was rendered, by a little more skill and patience in the art of
explanation, an excellent lesson, or rather exercise in reasoning.

It is scarcely possible that a stranger, who sees a child only for a
few hours, can guess what he knows, and what he does not know; or that
he can perceive the course of his thoughts, which depends upon
associations over which he has no command; therefore, when a stranger,
let his learning and abilities be what they will, attempts to teach
children, he usually puzzles them, and the consequences of the
confusion of mind he creates, last sometimes for years: sometimes it
influences their moral, sometimes their scientific reasoning. "Every
body but my friends," said a little girl of six years old, "tells me I
am very pretty." From this contradictory evidence, what must the child
have inferred? The perplexity which some young people, almost arrived
at the years of discretion, have shown in their first notions of
mathematics, has been a matter of astonishment to those who have
attempted to teach them: this perplexity has been at length discovered
to arise from their having early confounded in their minds the ideas
of a triangle, and an angle. In the most common modes of expression
there are often strange inaccuracies, which do not strike us, because
they are familiar to us; but children, who hear them for the first
time, detect their absurdity, and are frequently anxious to have such
phrases explained. If they converse much with idle visiters, they will
seldom be properly applauded for their precision, and their
philosophic curiosity will often be repressed by unmeaning replies.
Children, who have the habit of applying to their parents, or to
sensible preceptors, in similar difficulties, will be somewhat better
received, and will gain rather more accurate information. S---- (nine
years old) was in a house where a chimney was on fire; he saw a great