This brought him to the word life, and then he sprung up and clapped his hands and whirled round.
I do not always check these natural gymnastics.
Such lessons as these I am teased for continually. Those who have studied I can carry still farther in derivation. I sometimes reverse the process and ask for all the words that are made from life, action, &c.
Often when I give the children their slates to amuse themselves a little while, they bring me lists of words made on this principle of analysis; and I assure you that when I read to them, I am never allowed to pass by a word that is not understood. Several times when I have deliberately pronounced a very long word that I expected to be questioned upon, it has brought half a dozen of my little audience to their feet.
I was very fond, when a child, of listening to lessons upon figures of speech, given in my mother's school; and was quite expert in hunting up metaphors, tropes, hyperboles, and personifications. So I impart the same pleasure. The spiritual applications of words is pleasantly educed out of their sensuous qualities, also. "The sweet apple," and "the sweet child," are equally significant; and it is well to trace back words thus figuratively used to their original meaning in the sensuous world, for they are felt to be more significant when thus verified. It leads to sound thinking. There are so many poetical expressions in common parlance, that it is very easy to put children upon this track.
I have lately set up a little class in thinking, preliminary to giving some idea of the construction of sentences. I do not attempt to teach grammar technically to such little people as mine; but I contrive to induct it into them by certain devices, not wholly original, for they are recorded in the "Record of a School." Allow me to repeat the drilling with which I began.
I called them around me one day to have a new lesson, which is always joyfully acceded to by these little lovers of new things, and nothing pleases them better than to be set to thinking.
I asked them if they knew what their five senses were.
Not one had ever heard those words used together, apparently.
I enumerated; sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste.