[Sidenote: To Whom will Children Listen?] To whom, then, _will_ they give a hearing? That is a difficult question, almost as difficult to answer as if it were asked “Who can whistle a tune?” At all events it is quite as difficult to tell people how to gain the attention of children as it is to tell them how to whistle a tune. If they can, they can; and if they can’t, it isn’t much use telling them. However, it is just possible that anyone who has looked through the pages of this little book may have been stirred to think about children, and to try to understand them. In that case a step has been taken on the road to being one of those lucky people to whom children will listen. [Sidenote: Children Know their Friends.] Small boys and girls, like dogs, know by intuition the people who are fond of them, and unless the would-be speaker belongs to this class he need not hope to get their attention. Grown-up people listen to someone whom they do not like on the chance of finding something to criticize or ridicule. Children simply do not listen at all. [Sidenote: Children must be Understood.] But a love for children is not enough. There must be the effort to understand them. Unless there be at least some comprehension of their characters, there is bound to be a lack of that sympathy which is the essential requisite. Somehow or other, children seem to feel at once whether or not there exists that subtle link between themselves and the speaker, and if they cannot discover it they will not—perhaps even cannot—listen. [Sidenote: A Difficult Art.] The mistake so often made is to imagine that it is easy to understand children. The exact opposite is the fact. It is far easier for anyone to understand grown-up people whose minds work much in the same way as his own than to comprehend and sympathise with the curiously complex thoughts and reasonings of children. [Sidenote: An Honest Saleswoman.] It has been seen how strangely imaginative all children are, but at the same time they are often most literal. There is a well-known story of a little girl selling artificial flowers at a bazaar who was so anxious that there should be no mistake on the part of the purchasers that she said to each, “They are not _real_, you know; they are _stuffed_!” No doubt this same child would have treated these same flowers as absolutely real if she had had them to play with, and would have let her imagination run riot with them. Again, children are often so tender-hearted that they cannot bear to hear of the sufferings of other children, but will inflict intense pain on some insect with complete callousness, the reason being that the one comes within their comprehension while the other does not. These simple matters are mentioned here merely to show the complicity of children’s characters, and to try to induce those who wish to teach them to abandon the idea that it is perfectly easy to understand children. [Sidenote: Infection Spreads Rapidly.]