The season of the year seems to have its effect upon the intensity of the emotion of sex-love among children. One teacher from Texas, who furnished me with seventy-six cases, said that he had noticed that the matter of love among children seemed “fairly to break out in the spring-time.” Many of the others who reported, incidentally mentioned the love affairs as beginning in the spring. This also agrees with my own observations. It may partly be accounted for by the fact that during the winter months the children have much less freedom in playing together, and hence fewer opportunities for forming and showing preferences. On the other hand the suggestion inevitably occurs that there is some connection between this and the pairing season among animals and the sexual periodicity among primitive peoples. “Showing-off” as a method of courtship is not only as old as the human race, but is perhaps the most common one used by animals. While the complete discussion of this topic is reserved for the chapter upon courtship, the picture of love as it is experienced by the young people in this second stage would not be complete without at least a passing reference to it. It constitutes one of the chief numbers in the boy's repertory of love charms, and is not totally absent from the girl's. It is a most common sight to see the boys taxing their resources in devising means of exposing their own excellences, and often doing the most ridiculous and extravagant things. Running, jumping, dancing, prancing, sparring, wrestling, turning hand-springs, somersaults,--backward, forward, double,--climbing, walking fences, singing, giving yodels and yells, whistling, imitating the movements of animals, “taking people off,” courting danger, affecting courage, are some of its common forms. I saw a boy upon one such occasion stand on the railroad track until by the barest margin he escaped death by a passenger engine. One writer gives an account of a boy who sat on the end of a cross-tie and was killed by a passing train. This tendency to show off for love's sake, together with the inability to make any direct declaration, is well illustrated in the love affair of Piggy Pennington, King of Boyville.[10] “Time and time again had Piggy tried to make some sign to let his feelings be known, but every time he had failed. Lying in wait for her at corners, and suddenly breaking upon her with a glory of backward and forward somersaults did not convey the state of his heart. Hanging by his heels from an apple tree limb over the sidewalk in front of her, unexpectedly, did not tell the tender tale for which his lips could find no words. And the nearest that he could come to an expression of the longing in his breast was to cut her initials in the ice beside his own when she came weaving and wobbling past on some other boy's arm. But she would not look at the initials, and the chirography of his skates was so indistinct that it required a key;