correct her, so she too had to begin over and over again. This play seemed to please them better than any they had had that day. But at last the little girl slid down by the side of her small instructor, and the children slept together in the bright sunshine.” From such tender, unconscious premonitions we pass to more strongly marked love plays, for which the services of a special instructor are usually necessary, as in the somewhat peculiar relation of the boy Rousseau to the little Goton who played the part of teacher in their private interviews: “Elle se permettait avec moi les plus grandes privautés, sans jamais m’en permettre aucune avec elle; elle me traitait exactement en enfant: ce qui me fait croire, ou qu’elle avait déjà cessé de l’être ou qu’au contraire elle l’était encore assez elle-même pour ne voir qu’un jeu dans le péril auquel elle s’exposait.” Often, too, children show the same sort of preference, all unconscious of its import, toward particular favourites among their grown-up friends, enjoying the pleasure of contact for its own sake. “The pretty girl,” says Mantegazza, “whom Nature has endowed with the power to awaken longings and sighs at her every step, often does not realize that in the swarm of her admirers there are boys scarcely yet past their childhood, who secretly kiss any flower on which she may chance to look, who are happy if they may steal like a thief into the room where the beauty has slept and may kiss the carpet that her foot has pressed; ... and how seldom does she suspect, as her fingers play with the locks of the little fellow whose head rests on her knee, that his heart is beating audibly under her caressing touch!”[503] Perez cites Valle’s account of a ten-year-old boy who was in love with his older cousin. “Elle vient quelquefois m’agacer le cou, me menacer les côtes de ses doigts longs. Elle rit, me caresse, m’embrasse; je la serre en me défendant et je l’ai mordue une fois. Elle m’a crié: Petit méchant! en me donnant une tape sur la joue un peu fort, etc.”[504] This feeling may be involved in some of the positions and movements of tussling boys. Schaeffer has remarked in a short paper that in the belligerent plays of boys, especially ring fighting,[505] “the fundamental impulse of sexual life for the utmost extensive and intensive contact, with a more or less clearly defined idea of conquest underlying it,” plays a most conspicuous part. I do not believe that this is the rule, yet I am convinced that Schaeffer’s view is more often correct than would appear at a first glance, and especially so when the contestants are on the ground and laughingly struggle together.