“April 27, 1899. Editor Of Child-study Monthly:

In the April number of your magazine, under the head of ‘ Workings of the Child’s Mind,’ Lena May Breed asks for an explanation of an incident which occurred in her school. I have come to the child’s rescue with an experience which was in some ways similar to little Ernest K’s. When my mother was about five years of age she stood by her father’s knee one evening and began to tell him about herself when she was a lady. ‘Oh father,’ she said, ‘When I was a lady I had such a beautiful dress, and my bonnet was so pretty, and I wore slippers that were laced to the knee with ribbons.’  ‘What is that you are talking about?’ asked her father. ‘I am telling about when I was a lady,’ repeated the child, and she again went into the details of her wardrobe. Her father, horrified that his daughter should be so untruthful, reprimanded her severely, saying: ‘Charlotte, you were never a lady.’ ‘Oh, yes I was,’ continued the child, more enthusiastically; whereupon her father turned and reprimanded her more sternly than before,saying: ‘If I ever know of your telling another such a falsehood I shall punish you severely.’  The child went away by herself and cried herself sick, but kept her sorrow from her father, who never knew how terribly he had made her suffer.

My mother says that the picture of herself as a lady is as vivid to day as it was at that time, and that there was no intention of telling a falsehood; it could not well be set down as such. She accounts for the incident in this way: She had probably seen some lady, or the picture of some lady, whom she greatly admired, and being a child with a vivid imagination, she had so completely put herself into the beautifully dressed woman’s place, that the whole thing was a reality to her.

When my daughter was about two and a half or three years of age she played constantly with an imaginary brother. She talked always to ‘Johnnie,’ as if he were a real child younger than herself, for whom she must care. When she walked the street her hand was always extended as if holding another child’s hand, and, being an only child, this imaginary playmate was, without doubt, a great source of enjoyment and comfort to her.