We all know the child’s aptness in ‘easing’ the pressure of commands and prohibitions. If, for example, he is told to keep perfectly quiet because mother or father wants to sleep, he will prettily plead for the reservation of whispering ever so softly. If he is bidden not to ask for things at the table he will resort to sly indirect reminders of what he wants, as when a boy of five and a half years whispered audibly: ‘I hope somebody will offer me some more soup,’ or when a girl of three and a half years, with still greater childish tact, observed on seeing the elder folk eating cake: ‘I not asking’. This last may be compared with a story told by Rousseau of a little girl of six years who, having eaten of all the dishes but one, artfully indicated the fact by pointing in turn to each of the dishes, saying: ‘I have eaten that,’ but carefully passing by the untasted one.[194] When more difficult duties come to be enforced and the neophyte in the higher morality is bidden to be considerate for others, and even to sacrifice his own comfort for theirs, he is apt to manifest a good deal of skill in adjusting the counsel of perfection to young weakness. Here is an amusing example. A little boy, Edgar by name, aged five and three-quarter years, was going out to take tea with some little girls. His mother, as is usual on such occasions, primed him with special directions as to behaviour, saying: “Remember to give way to them like father does to me”. To which Edgar, after thinking a brief instant, replied: “Oh, but _not_ all at _once_. _You_ have to _persuade_ him.” ----- Footnote 194: _Emile_, livre v., quoted by Perez, _L’Art et la Poésie chez l’Enfant_, p. 127. Rousseau uses this story in order to show that girls are more artful than boys. ----- A like astuteness will show itself in meeting accusation. The various ways in which a child will seek to evade the point in such cases are truly marvellous and show the childish intelligence at its ablest. Sometimes the dreary talking to, with its well-known deep accusatory tones, its familiar pleadings, ‘How can you be so naughty?’ and the rest is daringly ignored. After keeping up an excellent appearance of listening the little culprit will proceed in the most artless way to talk about something more agreeable. This is trying, but is not the worst. The deepest depth of maternal humiliation is reached when a carefully prepared and solemnly delivered homily is rewarded by a _tu quoque_ in the shape of a correction of something in the delivery which offends the child’s sense of propriety. This befel one mother who, after talking seriously to her little boy about some fault, was met with this remark: “Mamma, when you talk you don’t move your upper jaw”.