How easy it would be to kill these beginnings of faith! How easy for a teacher who had studied the Higher Criticism to wither the growth of a belief in the unseen and incomprehensible! Is it worth while to risk this by scrupulously teaching that Elijah’s chariot of fire and Jonah’s whale had better be taken as allegories? A teacher with great experience of little children has said, and said most truly, “Religion attracts greatly because of the mystery which surrounds the unseen. Besides this, the beauty and the wonderful fitness of all things in nature strengthen more than anything a child’s belief in a Divine Creator.” * * * * * Perhaps, as one last word, it may be said that that mother will succeed best in the religious training of her children who feels that it is the chief and highest work she has to do. CHAPTER V THE CHILD—ITS IMITATION [Sidenote: Selection of those about the Path of a Child.] No one who has to do with children can fail to be struck by their almost universal habit of imitation. This begins at a very early age, and, while some imitative expressions and gestures are partly the result of heredity, others are obviously copied from the persons with whom the child is most familiar. This makes it, of course, extremely important that the servants and even the friends who are brought most closely into contact with a child should be selected with the greatest care. [Sidenote: Meals in the Servants’ Hall.] How often a bad accent or “twang” is picked up as soon as a child begins to speak, and with what difficulty it is eradicated afterwards! The habit, too, which obtains with some parents (who do not want to be bothered with their children) of letting them have their meals with the servants is greatly to be deprecated. It saves the trouble of a special nursery dinner, and it often happens that the servants in a house are fonder of the company of the children than are their parents, but for all that the tendency to imitate is so strong that habits are pretty sure to be learnt which it will be very troublesome to get rid of afterwards. Here is an example: A little girl, whom circumstances had relegated to the entire charge of servants, was taken out to a children’s tea-party, when she was scarcely four years old. It was a splendid tea, and she was a fine healthy little girl with an equally fine healthy appetite. Bread and butter, cake, jam sandwiches, and buns all disappeared with equal ease, and there came a time when the rest had finished and she had just one mouthful left.... There was a slight pause in the general chatter, and at that unlucky moment the little girl in question gave an unmistakable hiccough. Many of the children there would have blushed with distress at such an incident, but this little maiden, accustomed to the manners of the servants’ hall, looked round with an ingratiating smile and merely remarked—“Copplyments!”