We now pass to human activities which are chosen as models by children still more than are the activities of animals. It may be stated in general that there is scarcely anything which engages the energy of man which is not made the object of childish imitation. Children of savages naturally have a much smaller _répertoire_ than those of civilized people, but as far as the fact of imitation is concerned, and as it appears in child’s play, it usually strikes travellers most forcibly, since they are not as a rule alive to the less salient phenomena of experimentation. Livingstone says that in central Africa it is remarkable how few playthings the children have; their life seems to be already a serious one, and their only amusement consists in imitating their elders while they build huts, lay out gardens, or make bows, arrows, shields, and spears. In other places, he says, giving a beautiful instance of childish invention and illusion, many bright children are found who have plenty of attractive toys. They shoot birds with their little bows, and teach captive ones to sing. They are very skilful in setting traps and snares for small birds, as in the preparation and spreading of birdlime. The boys make toy guns out of reeds and shoot grasshoppers.[569] Many other witnesses confirm all this, though their reports are usually less full and lucid, and we may conclude that the games and sports of adults are also early acquired by the children by means of imitation. Among the “wild men” exhibited in Europe, quite small children are often found who perform the dances of their elders with astonishing accuracy, and travellers tell us that they do the same thing in their homes. Captain Jacobsen once attended a regular Indian child’s party, for which the little people painted their faces and stuck feathers in their hair in regulation style. “It was really comical to see little tots of three and four gotten up in this fashion and dancing about with leaps and bounds while older ones beat the wooden drum.”[570] Children of civilized peoples still retain among their plays many heathenish customs which have not been practised by adults within the memory of man. An interesting example will accomplish the transition from savagery, dealing as it does with the powerful influence of the imitation of the uncultured on European children. Signe Rink tells of her childhood spent in Greenland: “Like all European children in the country my brothers and sisters and I had a genuine passion for everything pertaining to Greenland; and accordingly, as soon as the door was shut on our elders we tried in every possible way and by all sorts of mimicry to identify ourselves with our playmates. My brother got himself up as a seal hunter from head to foot, and I became an Eskimo woman with waddling gait, who was sternly forbidden to leave the house.” And of her play in an Eskimo hut and with a Greenlandic girl she gives the following