inally,
with even heightened sympathy, pausing before a blooming _parterre_ of
confectionery hard by the abode of her man of letters, "that, I suppose,
is where he buys his sugar pigs."

In all her excursions into streets new to her, this same child is intent
upon a certain quest--the quest of a genuine collector. We have all
heard of collecting butterflies, of collecting china-dogs, of collecting
cocked hats, and so forth; but her pursuit gives her a joy that costs her
nothing except a sharp look-out upon the proper names over all
shop-windows. No hoard was ever lighter than hers. "I began three weeks
ago next Monday, mother," she says with precision, "and I have got thirty-
nine." "Thirty-nine what?" "Smiths."

The mere gathering of children's language would be much like collecting
together a handful of flowers that should be all unique, single of their
kind. In one thing, however, do children agree, and that is the
rejection of most of the conventions of the authors who have reported
them. They do not, for example, say "me is"; their natural reply to "are
you?" is "I are." One child, pronouncing sweetly and neatly, will have
nothing but the nominative pronoun. "Lift I up and let I see it
raining," she bids; and told that it does not rain resumes, "Lift I up
and let I see it not raining."

An elder child had a rooted dislike to a brown corduroy suit ordered for
her by maternal authority. She wore the garments under protest, and with
some resentment. At the same time it was evident that she took no
pleasure in hearing her praises sweetly sung by a poet, her friend. He
had imagined the making of this child in the counsels of Heaven, and the
decreeing of her soft skin, of her brilliant eyes, and of her hair--"a
brown tress." She had gravely heard the words as "a brown dress," and
she silently bore the poet a grudge for having been the accessory of
Providence in the mandate that she should wear the loathed corduroy. The
unpractised ear played another little girl a like turn. She had a phrase
for snubbing any anecdote that sounded improbable. "That," she said,
more or less after Sterne, "is a cotton-wool story."

The learning of words is, needless to say, continued long after the years
of mere learning to speak. The young child now takes a current word into
use, a little at random, and now makes a new one, so as to save the
interruption of a pause for search. I have certainly detected, in
children old