Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-08-13


brain never weighs more
than an ounce or two
than it does the tenth birthday. The arms and
especially the legs are relatively the length of the
trunk, much shorter than they will be. The legs
bent up at the thigh little like those of quadrupeds
There is special tendency to bow-leggedness, and
to turn the soes of the feet inward climbers have
to do. The toes flexible, and the creases the
foot, too, suggest prehension. The baby grasps
its cup by putting all the fingers into it and shutting
them upon the palm, just as an ape does, and only
after the lapse of months learns to oppose the
thumb to the fingers
Altogether it is curious little homuncuus that
is cast by angry upon the shores of life, and
only fond maternal love in the squnt-eyed
bow-legged dear little monster all its intrinsic
lovelincss, and sometimes even it is shocked at
first, and in morbid the first instinct of the
mother is only of dsillusion and aversion. There
is at first little but promise and potency, but the
gladness of it all is of the chief joys of life
The first teeth mark epoch The new infant
OF a few weeks Graves something hard to bite and
thus help along the process of dentition. The
front teeth cutters biters, and suggest
certain diet and, therefore, mode of life They
are serviceable in biting off, but not in chewing,
and the whole intestinal is curiously adapted
to swallowing things whole. | know mother who
recorded one button, two bugs, a caterpillar,
small bullet and lump of coal as swallowed by her
child in single day, but all without injury Later
when the grinders and food is masticated,
the digestive apparatus rapidly grows ntOlerant OF
food that is uncrushed. So here we have a remark
able adjustment of developmental stages Taste and
smell are hard to study, but they develop slowly
Touch the most extensive of all the senses,
marks the skin the boundary between the ego
Id the non-ego. All within it is part of the me ~
all without it belongs to the mot me-" All the
thousands of tactic bodies that are more widely
distributed over the whole body later present
in the newborn child, that its skin is extremely
sensitive And yet, strange to say infants bear
some kinds of invasion of the body with apparently
suffering, that would great pain to adults.
1t is singular how helpless the human infant is.
The chick, the first hour of its life, walks, pecks
accurately at food, and the young of other animals
have high endowment at birth. The infants
more than tabaia rasa, white piece of paper,
to be written on by experience. No creature is
so helpless and yet of course none has such long
career of development Most high animals need
only sixth, eighth, perhaps tenth, of their
average life to attain maturity. The infant needs
a third, at least fourth. This prolongation of
infancy has helped to develop parental sympathy
and love, and constitutes the unique possibility of
education. As evolves this plastic stage will
probably grow longer instead of sncrter.
Then comes the marvel of learning to walk.
Babies have many modes of creeping, hitchng,
rolling. 1t is epoch when the child first toddles
a step two from its mothers knee to chair. This
is often unconscious and ends in a tumble if the
child becomes conscious of what it is doing.
To get on end and balance along from foot
s. to foot is far difficult art than walking
- on tall stills, or balancing on tght-rope.
49, When the child begins to cruise about there
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