various
things, but he declines regular responsibility; his interest is in
spurts.

He is interested in sounds, both in those he can produce and in those
produced by others: soon he is interested in music, he will listen to it
for considerable periods, and may join in it: at first more especially
on the rhythmical side. So, too, he likes the rhythm of poetry and the
melody sounds of words. He is interested in making things; on a wet day
he will ask for scissors and paste, or bring out his paint box or
chalks; on a fine day he mixes sand or mud with water, or builds a
shelter with poles and shawls; at any time when he has an opportunity he
shuts himself into the bathroom and experiments with the taps, sails
boats, colours water, blows bubbles, tries to mix things, wet and dry.

He is interested in the doings of other people, in their conduct and in
his own; he is more interested in their badness than in their goodness:
"Tell me more of the bad things your children do," said a little boy to
his teacher aunt, and the request is significant and general; we learn
so little by mere uncontrasted goodness. He is interested in the words
that clothe narrations and in their style, he is impatient of a change
in form of an accepted piece of prose or poetry. He is hungry for the
sounds of telling words and phrases.

He is interested in reproducing the doings of other people so that he
may experience them more fully, and this involves minute observation,
careful and intelligent imitation, and vivid imagination. His own word
for it is pretence.

There are other things that he grasps at more vaguely and later; he is
dimly aware that people have lived before, and he is less dimly aware
that people live in places different from his own surroundings. He
realises that some of the stories, such as the fairy stories, are true
in one sense, a sense that responds to something within himself; that
some are true in another more material, and external sense, one
concerned with things that really happen. He hears of "black men," and
of "ships that carry people across the sea," and of "things that come
back in those ships."

He is interested in the immaterial world suggested by the mysteries of
woods and gardens, he has a dim conception that there is some life
beyond the visible, he feels a power behind life and he reveals this in
his early questions. He is keenly interested in questions of birth and
death, and sometimes comes into close cont