very tasteful and pretty, but of the smallest educational value. ]

And the same book I think might well contain a list of foundation
things and words and certain elementary forms of expression which the
child should become perfectly familiar with in the first three or four
years of life. Much of each little child's vocabulary is its personal
adventure, and Heaven save us all from system in excess! But I think it
would be possible for a subtle psychologist to trace through the easy
natural tangle of the personal briar-rose of speech certain necessary
strands, that hold the whole growth together and render its later
expansion easy and swift and strong. Whatever else the child gets, it
must get these fundamental strands well and early if it is to do its
best. If they do not develop now their imperfection will cause delay
and difficulty later. There are, for example, among these fundamental
necessities, idioms to express comparison, to express position in space
and time, elementary conceptions of form and colour, of tense and mood,
the pronouns and the like. No doubt, in one way or another, most of
these forms are acquired by every child, but there is no reason why
their acquisition should not be watched with the help of a wisely
framed list, and any deficiency deliberately and carefully supplied. It
would have to be a wisely framed list, it would demand the utmost
effort of the best intelligence, and that is why something more than
the tradesman enterprise of publishers is needed in this work. The
publisher's ideal of an author of an educational work is a clever girl
in her teens working for pocket-money. What is wanted is a little
quintessential book better and cheaper than any publisher, publishing
for gain, could possibly produce, a book so good that imitation would
be difficult, and so cheap and universally sold that no imitation would
be profitable.