This subject of childish ceremonial is a curious one, and deserves a more careful study. It is hardly less interesting than the origin and survival of adult ceremonial, as elucidated by Mr. Herbert Spencer. The respect for orderly procedure on all serious occasions, and especially at church, is as exacting as that of any savage tribe. _Punch_ illustrated this some years ago by a picture of a little girl asking her mamma if Mr. So and So was not a very wicked man, because he didn’t “smell his hat” when he came into his pew. This jealous regard for ceremony and the proprieties of behaviour is seen in the enforcement of rules of politeness by children who will extend them far beyond the scope intended by the parent. A delightful instance of this fell under my own observation, as I was walking on Hampstead Heath. It was a spring day, and the fat buds of the chestnuts were bursting into magnificent green plumes. Two well-dressed ‘misses,’ aged, I should say, about nine and eleven, were taking their correct morning walk. The elder called the attention of the younger to one of the trees, pointing to it. The younger exclaimed in a highly shocked tone: “Oh, Maud (or was it ‘Mabel’?), you know you _shouldn’t_ point!” The notion of perpetrating a rudeness on the chestnut tree was funny enough. But the incident is instructive as illustrating the childish tendency to stretch and generalise rules to the utmost. The domain of prayer well illustrates the same tendency. The child envisages God as a very, very grand person, and naturally, therefore, extends to him all the courtesies he knows of. Thus he must be addressed politely with the due forms ‘Please,’ ‘If you please,’ and so forth. The German child shrinks from using the familiar form ‘Du’ in his prayers. As one maiden of seven well put it in reply to a question why she used ‘Sie’ in her prayers: “Ich werde doch den lieben Gott nicht Du nennen: ich kenne ihn ja gar nicht”. Again, a child feels that he must not worry or bore God (children generally find out that some people look on them as bores), or treat him with any kind of disrespect. C. objected to his sister’s remaining so long at her prayers, apparently on the ground that, as God knew what she had to say, her much talking would be likely to bore him. An American boy of four on one occasion refused to say his prayers, explaining, “Why, they’re old. God has heard them so many times that they are old to him too. Why, he knows them as well as I do myself.” On the other hand, God must not be kept waiting. “Oh, mamma,” said a little boy of three years eight months (the same that was so insistent about the kissing and hand-shaking), “how long you have kept me awake for you; God has been wondering so whenever I was going to say my prayers.” All the words must be nicely said to him. A little boy, aged four and three-quarter years, once stopped in the middle of a prayer and asked his mother: “Oh! how do you spell that word?” The