of means and capacity were to organize a committee with adequate funds,
secure the services of specially endowed men for the exhaustive study
of developing speech, publish a digested report, and, with the
assistance of a good writer or so, produce very cheaply, advertise
vigorously, and disseminate widely a small, clearly printed, clearly
written book of pithy instructions for mothers and nurses in this
matter of early speech they would quite certainly effect a great
improvement in the mental foundations of the coming generation. We do
not yet appreciate the fact that for the first time in the history of
the world there exists a state of society in which almost every nurse
and mother reads. It is no longer necessary to rely wholly upon
instinct and tradition, therefore, for the early stages of a child's
instruction. We can reinforce and organize these things through the
printed word.

For example, an important factor in the early stage of speech-teaching
is the nursery rhyme. A little child, towards the end of the first
year, having accumulated a really very comprehensive selection of
sounds and noises by that time, begins to imitate first the associated
motions, and then the sounds of various nursery rhymes--"Pat-a-cake,"
for example. In the book I imagine, there would be, among many other
things, a series of little versicles, old and new, in which, to the
accompaniment of simple gestures, all the elementary sounds of the
language could be easily and agreeably made familiar to the child's
ears. [Footnote: Messrs. Heath of Boston, U.S.A., have sent me a book
of Nursery Rhymes, arranged by Mr. Charles Welsh, which is certainly
the best thing I have seen in this way. It is worthy of note that the
neglect of pedagogic study in Great Britain is forcing the intelligent
British parent and teacher to rely more and more upon American
publishers for children's books. The work of English writers is often