We all hate the tell-tale child, and when a boy comes in from his walk and has much to say of the wicked behaviour of his little sister on the afternoon's outing, his mother is apt to see in this a most horrid tendency towards tale-bearing and currying of favour. She does not realise that day by day, when the children have come in from their walk, she has asked nurse in their hearing if they have been good children; and when, as often happens, they have not, the nurse has duly recounted their shortcomings, with the laudable notion of putting them to shame, and of emphasising to them the wickedness of their backsliding--and this son of hers is no hypocrite, but speaks only, as all children speak, in faithful reproduction of all that he hears. Those grown-up persons who are in charge of the children must realise that the child's vocabulary is their vocabulary, not his own. It is unfortunate, but I think not unavoidable, that so often almost the earliest words that the infant learns to speak are words of reproof, or chiding, or repression. The baby scolds himself with gusto, uttering reproof in the very tone of his elders: "No, no," "Naughty," or "Dirty," or "Baby shocked." Speech, then, is imitative from the first, if we except the early baby sounds with reduplication of consonants to which in course of time definite meaning becomes attached, as "Ba-ba," "Ma-ma," "Na-na," "Ta-ta," and so forth. Action only becomes imitative at a somewhat later stage. The first purposive movements of the child's limbs are carried out in order to evoke tactile sensations. He delights to stimulate and develop the sense of touch. At first he has no knowledge of distance, and his reach exceeds his grasp. He will strain to touch and hold distant objects. Gradually he learns the limitations of space, and will pick up and hold an object in his hand with precision. Often he conveys everything to his mouth, not because his teeth are worrying him, or because he is hungry, as we hear sometimes alleged, but because his mouth, lips, and tongue are more sensitive, because more plentifully furnished with the nerves of tactile sensation. By constant practice the sense of touch and the precision of the movement of his hands are slowly developed, and not these alone, for the child in acquiring these powers has developed also the centres in the brain which control the voluntary movements. When the child can walk he continues these grasping and touching exercises in a wider sphere. As the child of fifteen or eighteen months moves about the room, no object within his reach is passed by. He stretches out his hand to touch and seize upon everything, and to experience the joy of imparting motion to it. The impulse to develop tactile sensation and precision in the movements of his hands compels him with irresistible force. It is foolish to attempt to repress it. It is foolish, because it is a necessary phase in his development, and moreover a passing phase.