of an older child
trudges after the nimbleness of a conjurer. It is the greatest failure
to take these little _gobe-mouches_ to a good conjurer. His successes
leave them cold, for they had not yet understood what it was the good man
meant to surprise them withal. The amateur it is who really astonishes
them. They cannot come up even with your amateur beginner, performing at
close quarters; whereas the master of his craft on a platform runs quite
away at the outset from the lagging senses of his honest audience.

You may rob a child of his dearest plate at table, almost from under his
ingenuous eyes, send him off in chase of it, and have it in its place and
off again ten times before the little breathless boy has begun to
perceive in what direction his sweets have been snatched.

Teachers of young children should therefore teach themselves a habit of
awaiting, should surround themselves with pauses of patience. The simple
little processes of logic that arrange the grammar of a common sentence
are too quick for these young blunderers, who cannot use two pronouns but
they must confuse them. I never found that a young child--one of
something under nine years--was able to say, "I send them my love" at the
first attempt. It will be "I send me my love," "I send them their love,"
"They send me my love"; not, of course, through any confusion of
understanding, but because of the tardy setting of words in order with
the thoughts. The child visibly grapples with the difficulty, and is
beaten.

It is no doubt this unreadiness that causes little children to like twice-
told tales and foregone conclusions in their games. They are not eager,
for a year or two yet to come, for surprises. If you hide and they
cannot see you hiding, their joy in finding you is comparatively small;
but let them know perfectly well what cupboard you are in, and they will
find you with shouts of discovery. The better the hiding-place is
understood between you the more lively the drama. They make a convention
of art for their play. The younger the children the more dramatic; and
when the house is filled with outcries of laughter from the breathless
breast of a child, it is that he is pretending to be surprised at finding
his mother where he bade her pretend to hide. This is the comedy that
never tires. Let the elder who cannot understand its charm beware how he
tries to put a more intelligible form of delight in the place of it; for,
if not,