A little girl, while out with her nurse and brother, got lost by
separating herself from the nurse's side. When she was at last found
she was reprimanded for running away from the nurse. She felt that
she was being unjustly treated, for she said, "I did not run away; I
only _stood_ away," meaning, she had stepped around the corner
to look in a window. If she had been scolded for getting out of
sight of the nurse, she would have felt justly reproved; but,
accused of doing something she never did and never thought of
doing,--that is, running away,--she naturally resented this.

Those who have to deal with children in an intimate way cannot be
too scrupulous about how they use their words.

The logic of children often appears to us all wrong until we take
the trouble to see how they come to their queer conclusions.

The story is told of a boy who was sent to the circus in the
neighboring town by his uncle, who gave him an additional quarter
"so you can ride back in case it rains." Well, it did rain, and
Howard came back riding on the top seat, next to the driver, wet to
the skin. Now, any grown-up person knows why he was to ride back "in
case it rains"; but to Howard the association of ideas was directly
between raining and riding, and not between riding and coming home
dry.

This illustrates a very common difference between the reasoning of
children and that of adults. We _select_ ideas from a situation
and combine them and come to conclusions. The child combines ideas,
but he does not make any selection, and the simple explanation for
this lies in the fact that the child has not enough experience to