Make Play Profitable
In your play with the child make it a point to choose some game which will develop his senses and faculties. You can amuse him as easily and at the same time be accomplishing a great good. Do not put this matter off "until you have more time." Use a little time each day, if only five minutes. You are bound to experience to some extent the same result as a friend who said: "I started in with this thing for the good of the kids, but I find the kid who gets the most out of it is dad."
Rudyard Kipling, in his book "Kim," gives an instance of the Observation Game played by Kim and a trained native youth. Lurgan Sahib exposes to the sight of the two boys a tray filled with jewels and gems, allowing them to gaze upon it a few moments before it is withdrawn from sight. Then the competition begins, as follows: "There are under that paper five blue stones, one big, one smaller, and three small," said Kim in all haste. "There are four green stones, and one with a hole in it; there is one yellow stone that I can see through, and one like a pipe stem. There are two red stones, and—and—give me time."
But Kim had reached the limit of his powers. Then came the turn of the native child.
"First are two flawed sapphires, one of two ruttees and one of four, as I should judge. The four ruttees sapphire is chipped at the edge. There is one Turkestan turquoise, plain with green veins, and there are two inscribed—one with the name of God in gilt and the other being cracked across, for it came out of an old ring, I cannot read. We have not the five blue stones; four flamed emeralds there are, but one is drilled in two places, and one is a little carven."
"Their weight?" said Lurgan Sahib, impassively.
"Three, five, five and four ruttees, as I judge it. There is one piece of old greenish amber, and a cheap cut topaz from Europe. There is one ruby of Burma, one of two ruttees, without a flaw. And there is a Ballas ruby, flawed, of two ruttees. There is a carved ivory from China representing a rat sucking an egg; and there is last—ah ha! a ball of crystal as big as a bean set in a gold leaf."
"Kim is mortified at his bad beating, and asks the secret." The answer is: "By doing it many times over, till it is done perfectly, for it is worth doing."
Conscious and accurate sense impressions are essential for definite knowledge.
"He who knows and knows that he knows, he is wise, follow him."