XIIIWALKING ALONE; DEVELOPING INTELLIGENCE
Andnow our little girl was entered on the last month of the year—a month of the most absorbing activity, yet perhaps rather in practicing the powers she already had than in developing new ones. She added to the list of words she understood till it was impossible to make record of them all—new ones cropped up at every turn. She made the two small additions to her spoken words that I have already mentioned. She became perfectly secure in standing, and she was even more zealous to climb than before, making nothing, in the latter part of the month, of turning at the top of the stairs and sliding down, head first or feet first, rarely needing for safety the vigilant arms that always hovered ready to catch her.
For a time she made little advance towards walking, though she began now to show some pleasure and pride in being led about by the hand. But about the middle of the month the walking instinct seemed at last to stir. The little one had often stepped from chair to chair, keeping a hand on one till she had fairly hold of the other. If the gap was an inch wider than she could cross thus, she dropped down and crept. Now one day she looked at the tiny gap, let go her chair, stood longingly, made a movement as if to take the single step, and dropped ignominiously and crept; nor would she trust herself of her own accord to movement on her feet (though once her mother did coax her a few steps) for nearly a week. Then at last she ventured it.
I did not see the first exploit, but the next day I set her against the wall and told her to walk, and she would step forward with much sense of insecurity, tottering and taking tiny inches of steps, her legs spreading more widely at each one, till I caught her in myarms. Once I let her go as far as she could. She would not give up and sit down, but went on as far as her legs would carry her, tremulous, pleased, half afraid, half proud, and wholly conscious of doing something remarkable; and when at the seventh step she subsided to the floor, she was not in the least frightened, but got up readily and tottered on another six steps.
The next day she had weakened, however, and for several days she would not try again; and when she did try, she fell down after a single step. She wanted to try again, and crept back to the wall, stood up, laughed, waved her arms, made a false start, and could not quite find the courage. In the four days that remained of her first year she sometimes forgot herself and took a step or two; and she was perfectly able to take half a dozen any time, strong and steady on her feet; but it was not till shortly after the close of the year that she cast aside her fears and suddenly was toddling everywhere.
It was about the middle of the twelfth month that the little one added the useful sign of nodding to her means of communicating. She had been taught to nod as a mere trick the month before, and took to it at once, jerking her whole little body at every nod and priding herself mightily on it. Perhaps because of this pride and pleasure, it became after a time a sort of expression of approval: she greeted us with nodding in sign of pleasure when we came in; she nodded like a mandarin when she heard she was to go to ride. So now, when a pleasant suggestion was made, “Would Ruth like a cracker?” “Does Ruth want to go see the kitties?” her nod of approval soon passed into the meaning of assent; indeed, it began now to be joined with the grunt of “Ĕ!” that I have mentioned. She had a perfectly intelligible negative grunt, too, just such as grumpy grown people use, out of the primitive stock of their remotest ancestry, no doubt.
I was nearly taken in at one time by this cheerful nodding and “Ĕ!” The little lady used them so intelligently when she was offered something she wanted, and refused so consistently when offered what she knew she did not want, that I began to set down any question as understood if she said yes to it. But presently I had an inkling that when she did not know whether she wanted it or not, she said yes, on the chance—since most things prefaced by “Does Ruth want?” proved pleasant. So I asked her alluringly, “Does Ruth want a course in higher mathematics?”
The rosy baby looked at me gravely, waited with a considering air, as she always did, taking it in, nodded gravely, and said decisively, “Ĕ!”
“Does Ruth want to go and be a missionary in Raratonga?”
“Ĕ!” with no less decision.
I saved her confidence in my good faith by substituting something else as good, andmore immediately practicable, for the mysterious attractions I had offered, and used due caution thereafter in recording her answers.
It was evident that in a primitive way the little one was comparing and inferring not a little by this time. A week before, her grandmother had told her which was O on a set of letter cards she played with, and presently she showed Q with an inquiring cry: “What is this that looks so much like O and yet is not O?” It may be added that she always knew O afterwards, and picked up most of the other letters as easily—an evidence of the unnecessarily hard work we make of learning the letters by postponing them till the normal age of picking up the name of anything and everything is past.
She was, of course, sometimes quaintly misled in an inference by lack of knowledge. In the last week of the month I shut my eyes and asked her, “Where are aunty’s eyes?” The baby tried in vain to find thembehind the lids, and then leaned over from my lap and looked carefully for the lost eyes on the floor!
I hardly think that memory is much developed at this age; the probability is that even the two year old remembers things only in glimpses—one here and one there, but nothing continuous: this is one of the great differences between his mind and ours. But our little girl plainly remembered some things for days. In the second week of the month her uncle showed her how he lifted the window sash, and four days after, catching sight of the finger handle, she tugged at it with impatient cries, trying to make the sash go up. A few days later, having a flower in her hand when her feet were bare, she began, with a sudden memory, to beg to have something done to her toes with it, and it proved that two or three weeks before her mother had stuck a flower between the fat toes.
All this month, even more than in the eleventh, she was incessantly busy in exploringand learning. She opened boxes, took things out, and put them back; worked with infinite diligence and seriousness at such matters as getting a rubber ring off a notebook I had stretched it round; investigated crannies, spaces under grates, doors ajar, with an undying curiosity.
She began to imitate our actions more: she tried to comb her hair, to put flowers into a vase, to mark on a paper with a pencil; she pulled at her toes and muttered, as if she were saying the piggy rhyme.
She had a distinct idea as to what constituted herself, and when she was asked, “Where is Ruth?” she did not indicate her whole body, but always seized her head in her hands with certainty and decision.
She took delight in the new uses of mind and memory, no less than in her bodily powers; she would recall the association of an object and its name with joyous laughter, and her “Dă!” when she was asked to point to something was a cry of pleasure.
She had not an atom of moral sense, nor the least capacity of penitence or pity, but she was a friendly little thing, with no worse tempers than a resentful whimpering when she was put into her clothes—incumbrances that she much disliked. She was assiduous in putting her crackers into her friends’ mouths, whether for fun or for good-will; and it was not uncommon for her to throw herself, with kisses and clinging arms, about our necks after we had given her some specially valued pleasure, such as taking her outdoors. She was learning to coax effectively with kisses, too, when she wished very much to go.
And so the story of the swift, beautiful year is ended, and our wee, soft, helpless baby had become this darling thing, beginning to toddle, beginning to talk, full of a wide-awake baby intelligence, and rejoicing in her mind and body; communicating with us in a vivid and sufficient dialect, and overflowing with the sweet selfishness of babycoaxings and baby gratitude. And at a year old, there is no shadow on the charm from the perception that its end is near. By the second birthday we say, “Ah, we shall be losing our baby soon!” But on the first, we are eager, as the little one herself is, to push on to new unfoldings; it is the high springtime of babyhood—perfect, satisfying, beautiful.