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ariety of objects in the room, such as are calculated to interest and please the little listener. It is the pleasurable exercise of some dawning faculty or faculties acting through embryo organs of the brain, by which the mind can picture to itself, more or less vividly, unreal scenes, which is the source of the enjoyment in such cases as this. A child may be still more interested, perhaps, by imaginary conversations of this kind with pictures of animals, and by varying the form of them in such a way as to call a new set of mental faculties into play; as, for example, "Here is a picture of a squirrel. I'll ask him where he lives. 'Bunny! bunny! stop a minute; I want to speak to you. I want you to tell me where you live.--I live in my hole.--Where is your hole?--It is under that big log that you see back in the woods.' Yes" (speaking now to the child), "I see the log. Do you see it? Touch it with your finger. Yes, that must be it. But I don't see any hole. 'Bunny' (assuming now the tone of speaking again to the squirrel), 'I don't see your hole.--No, I did not mean that any body should see it. I made it in a hidden place in the ground, so as to have it out of sight.--I wish I could see it, and I wish more that I could look down into it and see what is there. What is there _in_ your hole, bunny?--My nest is there, and my little bunnies.--How many little bunnies have you got?'"--And so on, to any extent that you desire. It is obvious that conversations of this kind may be made the means of conveying, indirectly, a great deal of instruction to young children on a great variety of subjects; and lessons of duty may be inculcated thus in a very effective manner, and by a method which is at the same time easy and agreeable for the mother, and extremely attractive to the child. This may seem a very simple thing, and it is really very simple; but any mother who has never resorted to this method of amusing and instructing her child will be surprised to find what an easy and inexhaustible resource for her it may become. Children are always coming to ask for stories, and the mother often has no story at hand, and her mind is too much preoccupied to invent one. Here is a ready resort in every such emergency. "Very well," replies the mother to such a request, "I'll tell you a story; but I must have a picture to my story. Find me a picture in some book." The child brings a picture, no matter what. There is no possible pictu
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