In the very last days of the tenth month came a wonderful spring upward in the little one’s intelligence about her surroundings, and in her power of communicating with us. It involved the real beginning of spoken words--for the cat cry of the month before remained by itself, leading to nothing more, and though it was the first sound that expressed an idea, it was not from it, but from this later root, that spoken language sprang and grew. But the mental and language progress of these few days, just as the baby came to ten months old, was the beginning of a stage of development that belonged to the later months--a beginning too important to be crowded in at the close of a chapter that is mainly concerned with movement development. So I keep the account of it for the story of the eleventh month. XII RUDIMENTS OF SPEECH; CLIMBING AND PROGRESS TOWARD WALKING Talk before you go, Your tongue will be your overthrow, says the old saw. But perhaps our baby did not earn the ill omen, it was such a faint foreshadowing of speech that she was guilty of. Probably she would not have been detected in it at all, had not ten months’ practice made us pretty good detectives. Indeed, but for the notebook, by which I could compare from day to day the wavering approach to some meaning in her use of this or that syllable, I should not have dared to be sure there really was a meaning. It is in these formless beginnings of a beginning that we get our best clues (as in all evolutionary studies) to the real secrets of the origin of language. The little girl, as she came to ten months old, was a greater chatterer than ever, pouring out strings of meaningless syllables in joy or sorrow, with marvelous inflections and changes--such intelligent remarks as “Nĕ-nĕ-oom-bo,” and “Ga-boo-ng,” and “A-did-did-doo,” and certain favored syllables over and over, such as “Dă-dă-dă.” In the last four days of the tenth month we began to suspect a faint consistency in the use of several of the most common sounds. We began to think that something like “Dă!” (varying loosely to “Gă!” or “Dng!” or “Did-dă!” or “Doo-doo!” but always hovering round plain “Dă!”) was suspiciously often ejaculated when the little one threw out her hand in pointing, or exulted in getting to her feet; that “Nă-nă-nă!” was separating itself out as a wail of unwillingness and protest, and “Mă-mă-mă!” as a whimper of discontent, and loneliness, and desire of attention; while--nearest of all to a true word--a favorite old murmur of “M-gm” or “Ng-gng” recurred so often when something disappeared from sight that we could not but wonder if we had not here an echo of our frequent “All gone!”