Our baby had a leaning to throat sounds; but other babies begin with the lip sounds, and some, it is said, with the trilling _l_ and _r_. It seems to be only chance what position of the vocal organs is first used; but after once beginning to articulate, the baby seems to pass from sound to sound by slight changes (probably made accidentally in using the old sounds), and so goes through the list with some regularity. This practice in sounds may be at first quite without will, a mere overflow of energy into the vocal organs; but it is highly important none the less, for any creature that is to use human speech must get the speaking muscles into most delicate training. Think what fine and exact difference in muscular contractions we must make to be able to say “ball,” and be sure that it will not come out “pall”! For a week or two now the baby made a good deal of progress in control of her body. She strove valiantly every day to keep her head erect, and made some little advance. In the bath she began to push with her feet against the foot of the tub, so hard that her mother could not keep the little head from bumping on the other end. She pulled downward with her arms when her mother held them up in wiping her. These pushing and pulling movements may have been made for the pleasure of the feeling, or they may have been involuntary. Perhaps they were accidental movements, passing gradually into voluntary ones. In either case, as they developed, the old irregular movements of legs and arms passed away, as those of the head and face had done before. One new bit of muscular control was undoubtedly voluntary--a trick of putting out and drawing back the tip of her tongue between her pursed lips. And this was something more than just one new voluntary movement. The important thing was that she was using the movement to _bring together the evidence of two different senses into one perception_. When something touches against our fingers, we have one sort of feeling in them, and quite another when we pass them over the thing and “feel of it;” and this other, clearer feeling is really a compound one, made up of the touch sensation in the skin and the muscle sensation in the moving fingers. It is called “active touch,” and it is a wonderful key to the world around us--so wonderful that with this alone it proved possible to educate Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller. This active touch the baby had now developed in tongue and lips; not yet in the fingers.