The words used by textbooks give some indication of how far this aim is being realized, or rather of how far short we are of realizing it. Consider, for example, the words home, mother, father, brother, sister, help, plate, knife, fork, spoon, play, game, toy, tag, marbles, doll, run, jump, sing, plant, seed, grow, flower, car, wheel, string, cut, dig. The frequency of appearance in the first fifty pages of eight beginners' arithmetics was as shown in Table 9. The eight columns refer to the eight books (the first fifty pages of each). The numbers refer to the number of times the word in question appeared, the number 10 meaning 10 _or more_ times in the fifty pages. Plurals, past tenses, and the like were counted. _Help_, _fork_, _knife_, _spoon_, _jump_, _sing_, and _tag_ did not appear at all! _Toy_ and _grow_ appeared each once in the 400 pages! _Play_, _run_, _dig_, _plant_, and _seed_ appeared once in a hundred or more pages. _Baby_ did not appear as often as _buggy_. _Family_ appeared no oftener than _fence_ or _Friday_. _Father_ appears about a third as often as _farmer_. Book A shows only 10 of these thirty words in the fifty pages; book B only 4; book C only 12; and books D, E, F, G, and H only 13, 8, 14, 13, 10, respectively. The total number of appearances (counting the 10s as only 10 in each case) is 40 for A, 9 for B, 60 for C, 42 for D, 25 for E, 62 for F, 30 for G, and 37 for H. The five words--apple, egg, Mary, milk, and orange--are used oftener than all these thirty together. If it appeared that this apparent neglect of childish affairs and interests was deliberate to provide for a more systematic treatment of pure arithmetic, a better gradation of problems, and a better preparation for later genuine use than could be attained if the author of the textbook were tied to the child's apron strings, the neglect could be defended. It is not at all certain that children in grade 2 get much more enjoyment or ability from adding the costs of purchases for Christmas or Fourth of July, or multiplying the number of cakes each child is to have at a party by the number of children who are to be there, than from adding gravestones or multiplying the number of hairs of bald-headed men. When, however, there is nothing gained by substituting remote facts for those of familiar concern to children, the safe policy is surely to favor the latter. In general, the neglect of childish data does not seem to be due to provision for some other end, but to the same inertia of tradition which has carried over the problems of laying walls and digging wells into city schools whose children never saw a stone wall or dug well. * * * * *