Children of Educated Parents do not––Punch has hit off the state of the case. ‘Come and see the puff-puff, dear.’ ‘Do you mean the locomotive, Grandmamma?’ As a matter of fact, the child of four and five has a wider, more exact vocabulary in everyday use than that employed by his elders and betters, and is constantly adding to this vocabulary with surprising quickness; ergo, to give a child of this class a vocabulary is no part of direct education. Again, we know that nothing escapes the keen scrutiny of the little people. It is not their perceptive powers we have to train, but the habit of methodical observation and accurate record.
Generations of physical toil do not tend to foster imagination. It may be good, then, for the children of the working classes to have games initiated for them, to be carried through little dramatic plays until, perhaps, in the end they will be able to invent such little dramas for themselves!