How small a thing! Yes, but it was productive of great sensations. It was the first step he had ever known—by it was revealed to him the entirely new idea that one room could be on a different level from another. Then he found that it was a splendid place to sit upon—just the right height for him—and a still better place upon which to set up bricks and toys in order to knock them down and hear the crash of their fall. But, best of all, it was the place where his first deed of daring was performed. There came a day when he ventured to jump down! It was the first time that he had really cared for spectators: it was the first time that he had looked round for applause. For all these reasons—all connected with new sensations of pleasure—that little shallow wooden step made a deeper memory mark upon his mind than many subsequent places or events that have perhaps helped to turn the current of his life. But, after all is said, it is impossible not to feel that the unknown is so largely in excess of the known, in this as in many other subjects, that the only thing to be done is to try to induce those who have to do with little children to remember that much is possible and even probable—to act, that is, as if the youngest child may possibly remember for its good or ill any smallest fact or object with which its senses are brought into contact. CHAPTER III THE CHILD—ITS IMAGINATION The imagination of the poet, of the novelist, of the advertiser of a patent medicine, is as nothing compared with that of a little child. No one who is unable to realise this will understand children or be really successful in their upbringing. [Sidenote: The Riotous Imagination of Children.] [Sidenote: Unimaginative Parents.] Whence come all the marvellous ideas that people the brain of a mere baby of two or three years? Is it that it has descended but a step or two down the staircase and still has a mind to some extent untrammelled by human limitations and the hard dry facts of earth? Or is it that, possessed of a keenly receptive power, it has not learnt to control or arrange the multitudes of facts that present themselves daily to its senses? This wonderful imagination is no doubt closely allied with the early powers of memory of which mention has been made, and may also have something at least to do with the early propensity to untruthfulness. Many a child has suffered at the hands of an unimaginative parent for words which have been ruthlessly called lies though they have been so strongly prompted by a vivid imagination that they have seemed as true to the utterer as much that is unintelligible but has to be accepted. [Sidenote: Arrangement of the Numerals.] [Sidenote: The Circle of the Months.]