In these laughing games we have clearly an element of {201} make-believe. A firm persuasion, low down in consciousness, of the harmlessness of the coming bump and of the human bear in the blackness keeps the little girl’s heart steady and turns the adventure into fun. At the same time, the play as “pretending” would seem to involve at least a half-formed expectation of something, and probably, too, a final taste of delicious surprise at the fully realised nothingness of the half-expected. In some forms of play-pretence this element of final annihilation of expectation becomes more conspicuous and the distinct source of the hilarious exultation. When, for example, in the eleventh month, Ruth sitting on the floor held out her arms to be taken up, and the mother, instead of doing this, stooped and kissed the child, there was a perfect peal of laughter again and again. The increase of muscular activity shown in the laughing romps leads to the extension of mirthful enjoyment in another way. A vigorous child, even when a girl, grows aggressive and attempts various forms of playful attack. As we have seen, to tickle another is merely one variety of a large class of teasing operations, in which the teased as well as the teasing party is supposed to find his merriment. Regarding now the child as teaser, we see that he very early begins to exercise at once his own powers and others’ endurance. The pulling of whiskers is one of the earliest forms of practical jokes. Ruth took to this pastime in the first week of the fifth month. By the end of the sixth month the little tormentor had grown aware of her power, and “became most eager to pull, with laughter and exultant clamour, at the nose, ear, and especially the hair, of any one that held her”. The boy C., at the same age, delighted in pulling his sister’s hair, and was moved by her cries only to outbursts of laughter. As intelligence develops, these practical jokes grow more cunning. Another little {202} girl, of whom I have written elsewhere under the initial M., when seventeen months old, asked for her father’s “tick-tick,” looking very saucy; and as he stooped to give it, she tugged at his moustache, “and almost choked with laughter”. With this teasing of human companions we have that of animals. When sixteen months old, Ruth would chase the cat with shouts of laughter. Another child, a boy, about the same age, went considerably further, and taking the toilet puff from its proper place went deliberately to “Moses,” the cat, who was sitting unsuspectingly before the fire, and proceeded to powder him, each new application of the puff being accompanied by a short chuckle.