nd prepare the way
for a more painful and distressing laceration. Let us always take
instinct for guide. We never see puppies try their growing teeth upon
flints, or iron, or bones, but upon wood, or leather, or rags,--upon
soft materials, which give way, and on which the tooth impresses itself.

We no longer aim at simplicity, even where children are concerned.
Golden and silver bells, corals, crystals, toys of every price, of
every sort. What useless and mischievous affectations they are! Let
there be none of them,--no bells, no toys.

A little twig covered with its own leaves and fruit,--a poppy-head, in
which the seeds can be heard rattling,--a stick of liquorice he can
suck and chew, these will amuse a child quite as well as the splendid
baubles, and will not disadvantage him by accustoming him to luxury
from his very birth.

Language.

From the time they are born, children hear people speak. They are
spoken to not only before they understand what is said to them, but
before they can repeat the sounds they hear. Their organs, still
benumbed, adapt themselves only by degrees to imitating the sounds
dictated to them, and it is not even certain that these sounds are
borne to their ears at first as distinctly as to ours.

I do not disapprove of a nurse's amusing the child with songs, and with
blithe and varied tones. But I do disapprove of her perpetually
deafening him with a multitude of useless words, of which he
understands only the tone she gives them.

I would like the first articulate sounds he must hear to be few in
number, easy, distinct, often repeated. The words they form should
represent only material objects which can be shown him. Our
unfortunate readiness to content ourselves with words that have no
meaning to us whatever, begins earlier than we suppose. Even as in his
swaddling-clothes the child hears his nurse's babble, he hears in class
the verbiage of his teacher. It strikes me that if he were to be so
brought up that he could not understand it at all, he would be very
well instructed.[6]

Reflections crowd upon us when we set about discussing the formation of
children's language, and their baby talk itself. In spite of us, they
always learn to speak by the same process, and all our philosophical
speculations about it are entirely useless.

They seem, at first, to have a grammar adapted to their own age,
although its rules of syntax are more general than ours. And if we
were