ABSTRACT
Through what little channels, by what hints and premonitions, the consciousness of the man's art dawns first upon the child, it should be not only interesting but instructive to inquire. A matter of curiosity today, it will become the ground of science tomorrow. From the mind of childhood there is more history and more philosophy to be fished up than from all the printed volumes in a library. The child is conscious of an interest, not in literature but in life; a taste for the precise, the adroit or the comely in the use of words, comes late; and long before that he has enjoyed in books a delightful dress rehearsal of experience. To pass from hearing literature to reading it is to take a great and dangerous step. The malady of not marking overtakes them, they read thenceforward by the eye alone; and hear never again the chime of fair words or the march of the stately period.
