Children are desirous of understanding us and make brave efforts to put meanings into our words, sometimes falling comically short of the mark. A little fellow of two who had been called "fat" by his nurse when given his bath, afterwards proceeded to call his father "fat" when he saw him taking his bath. "Fat" had by a natural misconception taken on the meaning of "naked". It was a simple movement of childish thought when a little school-girl answered the question of the Inspector, "What is an average?" by saying, "What the hen lays eggs on". She had heard her mother say, "The hen lays so many eggs 'on the average' every week," and had no doubt imagined a little myth about this average. It is the same with what is read to them. Where they do not recognise a meaning they invent one, or if necessary substitute an intelligible word for an unintelligible one. Young Hermiston in R. L. Stevenson's last story naturally enough said in speaking of his father, the "hanging judge," "It were better for that man if a _milestone_ were bound about his neck". Similarly they will invert the relations of words in order to arrive at something like a meaning. Mr. Canton relates in his pretty sketch of a child, _The Invisible Playmate_, that his little heroine, who knew the lines in _Struwwelpeter_-- The doctor came and shook his head, And gave him nasty physic too-- was told that she would catch a cold, and that she at once replied, "And will the doctor come and shook my head?" It was so much more natural to suppose that when the doctor came and did something this was carried out on the person of the patient. There is something of this same impatience of meaningless sayings, of the same keen desire to import a meaning into strange words, in children's "word-play," as we call it. For example, a little boy about four years old heard his mother speak of nurse's neuralgia, from which she had been suffering for some time. He thereupon exclaimed, "I don't think it's _new_ ralgia, I call it _old_ ralgia". Was this playful punning or a half-serious attempt to correct a misstatement? A child called his doll "Shakespeare" because its spear-like legs could be shaken. We know that adults sometimes do the same kind of thing, as a cabman I once overheard speaking to somebody about putting down "_ash_phalt". We all like to feel at home with words, and if they look dreadfully strange we do our best to give them a look of old acquaintance.