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286
Artificial Intelligence
for Communications
and Networks
First EAI International Conference, AICON 2019
Harbin, China, May 25–26, 2019
Proceedings, Part I
Part 1
123
Lecture Notes of the Institute
for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics
and Telecommunications Engineering 286
Artificial Intelligence
for Communications
and Networks
First EAI International Conference, AICON 2019
Harbin, China, May 25–26, 2019
Proceedings, Part I
123
Editors
Shuai Han Liang Ye
Harbin Institute of Technology Harbin Institute of Technology
Harbin, China Harbin, China
Weixiao Meng
Harbin Institute of Technology
Harbin, China
© ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2019
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the
material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information
storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are
believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors
give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or
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published maps and institutional affiliations.
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Preface
We are delighted to introduce the proceedings of the first edition of the 2019 European
Alliance for Innovation (EAI) International Conference on Artificial Intelligence for
Communications and Networks (AICON). This conference brought together
researchers, developers, and practitioners from around the world who are leveraging
and developing artificial intelligence technology for communications and networks.
The theme of AICON 2019 was “Artificial Intelligence for Communications and
Networks: Applying Artificial Intelligence to Communications and Networks.”
The technical program of AICON 2019 consisted of 93 full papers, including six
invited papers in oral presentation sessions during the main conference tracks. The
conference tracks were: Track 1—AI-Based Medium Access Control;
Track 2—AI-based Network Intelligence for IoT; Track 3—AI-enabled Network Layer
Algorithms and Protocols; Track 4—Cloud and Big Data of AI-enabled Networks;
Track 5—Deep Learning/Machine Learning in Physical Layer and Signal Processing;
and Track 6—Security with Deep Learning for Communications and Networks. Aside
from the high-quality technical paper presentations, the technical program also featured
four keynote speeches and four invited talks. The four keynote speeches were by Prof.
Moe Win from the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, USA, Prof. Mohsen Guizani from the Department of Computer
Science and Engineering, Qatar University, Qatar, Prof. Guoqiang Mao from the Center
for Real-Time Information Networks, University of Technology Sydney, Australia, and
Prof. Byonghyo Shim from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Seoul National University, South Korea. The invited talks were presented by Prof.
Jinhong Yuan from the University of New South Wales, Australia, Prof. Shui Yu from
the University of Technology Sydney, Australia, Prof. Bo Rong from the Communi-
cations Research Centre, Canada, and Prof. Haixia Zhang from Shandong University,
China.
Coordination with the steering chair, Imrich Chlamtac, the general chairs, Xuemai
Gu and Cheng Li, and the executive chairs, Qing Guo and Hsiao-Hwa Chen, was
essential for the success of the conference. We sincerely appreciate their constant
support and guidance. It was also a great pleasure to work with such an excellent
Organizing Committee team and we thank them for their hard work in organizing and
supporting the conference. In particular, we thank the Technical Program Committee,
led by our TPC co-chairs, Prof. Shuai Han and Prof. Weixiao Meng, who completed
the peer-review process of technical papers and compiled a high-quality technical
program. We are also grateful to the conference manager, Andrea Piekova, for her
support and all the authors who submitted their papers to the AICON 2019 conference.
vi Preface
We strongly believe that the AICON conference provides a good forum for all
researchers, developers, and practitioners to discuss all scientific and technological
aspects that are relevant for artificial intelligence and communications. We also expect
that future AICON conferences will be as successful and stimulating as indicated by the
contributions presented in this volume.
Steering Committee
Imrich Chlamtac University of Trento, Italy
Organizing Committee
General Chairs
Xuemai Gu Harbin Institute of Technology, China
Cheng Li Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
Executive Chairs
Qing Guo Harbin Institute of Technology, China
Hsiao-Hwa Chen National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan
Program Chairs
Shuai Han Harbin Institute of Technology, China
Weixiao Meng Harbin Institute of Technology, China
Local Chair
Shuo Shi Harbin Institute of Technology, China
Workshop Chairs
Yahong Zheng Missouri University of Science and Technology, USA
Shaochuan Wu Harbin Institute of Technology, China
Publications Chair
Liang Ye Harbin Institute of Technology, China
Web Chairs
Xuejun Sha Harbin Institute of Technology, China
Chenguang He Harbin Institute of Technology, China
viii Organization
Panels Chair
Xianbin Wang University of Western Ontario, Canada
Demos Chair
Yi Qian University of Nebraska Lincoln, USA
Tutorials Chair
Mugen Peng Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications,
China
Conference Manager
Andrea Piekova EAI
Research on the Security of Personal Information in the Era of Big Data . . . . 107
Cheng Chi, Tengyu Liu, Xiaochen Yu, Shuo Zhang, and Shuo Shi
Secure Access and Routing Scheme for Maritime Communication Network . . . 115
Yuzhou Fu, Chuanao Jiang, Yurong Qin, and Liuguo Yin
Multipath Based Privacy Protection Method for Data Transmission in SDN . . . 127
Na Dong, Zhigeng Han, and Liangmin Wang
xvi Contents – Part II
Joint BP and RNN for Resilient GPS Timing Against Spoofing Attacks . . . . 190
Sriramya Bhamidipati, Kyeong Jin Kim, Hongbo Sun, Philip Orlik,
and Jinyun Zhang
Edge Computing Based Traffic Analysis System Using Broad Learning. . . . . 238
Xiting Peng, Kaoru Ota, and Mianxiong Dong
1 Introduction
Index modulation (IM) is one of the promising transmission schemes for next-
generation wireless communication systems due to its advantages [1]. It utilizes the
indices of the building blocks of the corresponding communication systems to convey
additional information bits in contrast to traditional modulation schemes that rely on
the modulation of the amplitude/phase/frequency of a sinusoidal carrier signal for
transmission [2]. In orthogonal frequency division multiplexing with index modulation
(OFDM-IM) system, a subset of subcarriers in an OFDM block is activated to convey
constellation symbols, the indices of the active subcarriers can be used to convey
additional information [3].
In the OFDM-IM system, the active subcarriers are selected by the incoming data
[4]. The correct determination of a subcarrier activation pattern (SAP) is essential for
© ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2019
Published by Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019. All Rights Reserved
S. Han et al. (Eds.): AICON 2019, LNICST 286, pp. 3–15, 2019.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22968-9_1
4 X. Jin et al.
the correct detection of the associated information bits. Different mapping and detection
techniques have been proposed, which indicate two major problems.
First of all, the detectors suffer from the possibility of detecting an invalid SAP
since not all of the possible SAPs are used in OFDM-IM. By now, a look-up table
mapping method and a combinatorial mapping method are mainly proposed [5]. But
the two methods share a common disadvantage that they cannot make full use of all
SAPs, unless the number of the SAPs is a power of 2. In this case, a method of using
unequal-length of index bits to exploit all SAPs is proposed [6], but it is difficult for
detection and the BER performance decreases. By changing the number of information
bits corresponding to the traditional amplitude phase modulation, and the information
bits carried by the OFDM block maintain constant, the literature [7] proposed an
equiprobable subcarrier activation method which is easy for detection, whereas the
transmission efficiency is not improved compared with the traditional OFDM-IM
system. In this paper, to achieve a better BER performance and higher transmission
efficiency, we propose a constructed index bits mapping method which use the concept
of bit-padding (BP) [8] to build an equal-length bits transmission scheme for dual-
mode OFDM (BPDM-OFDM).
The second problem is how to reduce the detection complexity while maintaining
high transmission efficiency. In [9], a dual-mode method is proposed to improve
transmission efficiency, but the log-likelihood ratio (LLR) detection algorithm which is
adopted has high complexity, especially under high order modulation [10]. In our
BPDM-OFDM system, a reduced-complexity approximate optimal LLR detector based
on the hard limit algorithm (LLR-HL) is employed, in which the modulation symbol is
detected by directly calculation instead of traversing all constellation points after the
active subcarriers are obtained [11].
It is shown via computer simulation that, under additive white Gaussian noise
(AWGN) channels and frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channels, our proposed
BPDM-OFDM achieves an overall better BER performance. And there is an increase
of 1 bit/s/Hz in transmission efficiency and a much lower detection complexity
achieved compared to the traditional OFDM-IM.
The rest of the paper is summarized as follows. In Section II, the system model of
BPDM-OFDM is presented. In Section III, the constructed index bits mapping method,
which is the main concept of BPDM-OFDM system, are introduced. The performance
of BPDM-OFDM compared with OFDM-IM is analyzed in Section IV. Finally, Sec-
tion V concludes the paper.
2 Methods
The number of subcarriers of OFDM-IM system is set as N, which is equal to the fast
Fourier transform (FFT). A total of m information bits enter the OFDM-IM transmitter
for the transmission of each OFDM block. These m bits are then split into g groups
each containing p bits, i.e., m ¼ pg. Each group of p-bits is mapped to an OFDM
subblock. The number of subcarriers of each subblock is n, where n ¼ N=g. Suppose
that the number of active subcarriers of each group is k, the number of SAPs is given by
the binomial coefficient Cðn; kÞ. The specific SAP of a subblock is determined by
Dual-Mode OFDM-IM by Encoding All Possible Subcarrier Activation Patterns 5
mapping a p1 -bit data code, where p1 ¼ blog2 Cðn; kÞc and bc is the floor function.
A data segment of p2 ¼ k log2 M bits is used such that k data codes of length log2 M
bits are mapped onto the M-QAM signal constellation to determine the data symbols
that are transmitted over the active subcarriers. Therefore, a total of p bits (p ¼ p1 þ p2 )
are mapped to an OFDM subblock of n subcarriers. This traditional OFDM-IM scheme
is shown in Fig. 1.
p1 bits Index
Selector
[X1,X2, ,XN]
p bits
Mapper OFDM
p2 bits
Block Cyclic
m bits Bit Creator Prefix
N-IFFT
Spliter & &
Subcarrier P/S
p1 bits Index Interleaving
Selector
Mapper
p2 bits
1
H ¼ ½H1 ; H2 ; . . .; HN T ¼ pffiffiffiffi FFTð
hT Þ ð1Þ
N
where hT ¼ ½hT ð1Þ; . . .; hT ðvÞ; 0; . . .; 0T , p1ffiffiNffi FFTðÞ represents FFT operation of point N.
At the receiver, after the CP removal operation and serial-to-parallel conversion, the
FFT operation of point N and de-interleaving are performed to obtain the received
signal Y ¼ ½Y1 ; Y2 ; . . .; YN T , where
Yn ¼ Hn Xn þ Wn ; 1 n N ð2Þ
u1 þ 1
Rðsl Þ ¼ min½maxð2roundð Þ 1; N1 þ 1Þ; N1 1 ð4Þ
2
u2 þ 1
Iðsl Þ ¼ min½maxð2roundð Þ 1; N2 þ 1Þ; N2 1 ð5Þ
2
The constructed index bits mapping method includes the Backward Selection mode and
the Padding ‘1’ mode. The main idea is described as follows: a total of m information
bits enter the OFDM-IM transmitter for the transmission of each OFDM block, these m
bits are split into g groups each containing p bits, i.e., m ¼ pg. Select the first p1 bits of
the incoming p bits and convert the value of p1 into a decimal number Z. Then, we
compare the value of Z with Cðn; kÞ 2p1 1. According to the results of the com-
parison, the algorithm decides to choose one of the two modes, Backward Selection or
Padding ‘1’. The block diagram of the transmitter is given in Fig. 2.
(1) Backward Selection:
If 0 Z Cðn; kÞ 2p1 1, select one more bit after the first p1 bits, so the index
bits become a length of p1 þ 1 bits sequence, then take the next step according to
the ðp1 þ 1Þ-th bit. This is called Backward Selection.
(a) If the ðp1 þ 1Þ-th bit is ‘0’, the index value Z I is equal to Z.
8 X. Jin et al.
(b) If the ðp1 þ 1Þ-th bit is ‘1’, the index value Z I is equal to Z þ 2p1 .
(2) Padding ‘1’:
If Z [ Cðn; kÞ 2p1 1, padding ‘0’ or ‘1’ after p1 bits, then the index bits of p1
turn into p1 þ 1 bits. The index value Z I is equal to Z. This is called Padding ‘1’.
We take p1 ¼ 2; n ¼ 4; k ¼ 2 as an example for each subblock, which is shown in
Table 1. If the numeric value in the active subcarrier is ‘1’, it indicates that the cor-
responding subcarrier is activated, and ‘0’ indicates that the subcarrier is not activated.
If the p1 ¼ 2 information bits of the data stream are ‘00’, its decimal value is 0, that
is, Z ¼ 0. And Cðn; kÞ 2p1 1 ¼ 6 22 1 ¼ 1, so 0 Z Cðn; kÞ 2p1 1 is
derived, according to the algorithm, the one more bit after the first p1 bits of the data
stream will be selected. The ‘0’ or ‘1’ should be padded into the sequence after original
index bits to form the new index bits sequence, which we named the Constructed Index
Bits: If the subsequent bit is ‘0’, the Z I ¼ 0 is obtained by converting the new index
bits ‘000’ into decimal form; If the subsequent bit is ‘1’, the Z I ¼ 4 is obtained by
converting the new index bits ‘001’ to decimal plus 2p1 , then Z I ¼ Z þ 2p1 ¼ 4.
If the two information bits of the data stream are ‘10’, its decimal value is 2.
Cðn; kÞ 2p1 1 ¼ 6 22 1 ¼ 1, 2 1. Therefore, according to the algorithm, the
information bit ‘1’ will be padded after the original index bits ‘10’, we get a new index
bits ‘101’. Then the new index bits sequence ‘101’ is converted to the decimal form 2,
that is Z I ¼ 2.
Each subblock adopts the bit-padding technique mentioned above, in the meantime
a total of p2 bits are sent to the MA mapper and MB mapper.
where MA and MB represent the modulation order. It is clear that the length of sub-
carrier indices of each OFDM-IM subblock are equal after bit-padding process,
meanwhile the number of bits which carried in each subblock will be p ¼ ðp1 þ 1Þ þ p2
or p ¼ p1 þ p2 . Because of Backward Selection, the former is 1 larger than the latter.
According to the value of Z I , we use the combinational method to obtain the
corresponding SAP as shown in formula (2) [5]. Among them, ck [ . . . [ c1 0,
Dual-Mode OFDM-IM by Encoding All Possible Subcarrier Activation Patterns 9
BPDM-OFDM:
a. Backward Selection:
b. Padding ‘1’:
The comparison of the number of transmission data bits in each subblock between
BPDM-OFDM and OFDM-IM systems for n ¼ 4; k ¼ 2 are shown in Table 2.
Spectrum efficiency is calculated with q ¼ gðpN1 þþLp2 Þ.with BPSK, the spectrum
efficiency of OFDM-IM is 0.89 bit/Hz, and the spectrum efficiency of BPDM-OFDM
is 1.56 bit/s/Hz or 1.33 bit/s/Hz; With QPSK modulation, the spectrum efficiency
of OFDM-IM is 1.33 bit/Hz, and the spectrum efficiency of BPDM-OFDM is
2.45 bit/s/Hz or 2.22 bit/s/Hz. From the comparison it can be concluded that BPDM-
OFDM system obtains higher spectrum efficiency.
0
10
OFDM
OFDM-IM(4,2)
-1 OFDM-ISIM(4,2)
10
-2
10
BER
-3
10
-4
10
-5
10
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Es/No (dB)
0
10
BPDM-OFDM,LLR-HL
BPDM-OFDM,LLR
-1 BPDM-OFDM,ML
10
OFDM-IM,ML
-2
10
BER
-3
10
-4
10
-5
10
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Es/No (dB)
0
10
OFDM-IM,ML
BPDM-OFDM,LLR-ML
-1 BPDM-OFDM,ML
10
BPDM-OFDM without interleaving,LLR-HL
BPDM-OFDM with interleaving,LLR-HL
-2
10
BER
-3
10
-4
10
-5
10
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Es/No (dB)
For a week all went well. Nurse was on the alert, was quick to
note the ruddy storm-signal in the fair little face; never failed to
despatch him instantly, and with a quiet unconscious manner, on
some errand to father or mother; nay, she improved on her
instructions; when father and mother were out of the way, she herself
invented some pleasant errand to cook about the pudding for dinner;
to get fresh water for Dickie, or to see if Rover had had his breakfast.
Nurse was really clever in inventing expedients, in hitting instantly on
something to be done novel and amusing enough to fill the child’s
fancy. A mistake in this direction would, experience told her, be fatal;
propose what was stale, and not only would Guy decline to give up
the immediate gratification of a passionate outbreak—for it is a
gratification, that must be borne in mind—but he would begin to look
suspiciously on the “something else” which so often came in the way
of this gratification.
Security has its own risks. A morning came when Nurse was not
on the alert. Baby was teething and fractious, Nurse was overdone,
and the nursery was not a cheerful place. Guy, very sensitive to the
moral atmosphere about him, got, in Nurse’s phrase, out of sorts. He
relieved himself by drumming on the table with a couple of ninepins,
just as Nurse was getting baby off after a wakeful night.
“Stop that noise this minute, you naughty boy! Don’t you see your
poor little brother is going to sleep?” in a loud whisper. The noise
was redoubled, and assisted by kicks on chair-rungs and table-legs.
Sleep vanished and baby broke into a piteous wail. This was too
much; the Nurse laid down the child, seized the young culprit, chair
and all, carried him to the furthest corner, and, desiring him not to
move till she gave him leave, set him down with a vigorous shaking.
There were days when Guy would stand this style of treatment
cheerfully, but this was not one. Before Harriet had even noted the
danger signals, the storm had broken out. For half-an-hour the
nursery was a scene of frantic uproar, baby assisting, and even little
Flo. Half-an-hour is nothing to speak of; in pleasant chat, over an
amusing book, the thirty minutes fly like five; but half-an-hour in
struggle with a raging child is a day and a night in length. Mr. and
Mrs. Belmont were out, so Harriet had it all to herself, and it was
contrary to orders that she should attempt to place the child in
confinement; solitude and locked doors involved risks that the
parents would, rightly, allow no one but themselves to run. At last the
tempest subsided, spent, apparently, by its own force.
A child cannot bear estrangement, disapproval; he must needs
live in the light of a countenance smiling upon him. His passion over,
Guy set himself laboriously to be good, keeping watch out of the
corner of his eye to see how Nurse took it. She was too much vexed
to respond in any way, even by a smile. But her heart was touched;
and though, by-and-by, when Mrs. Belmont came in, she did say
—“Master Guy has been in one of his worst tempers again, ma’am:
screaming for better than half-an-hour”—yet she did not tell her tale
with the empressement necessary to show what a very bad half-hour
they had had. His mother looked with grave reproof at the
delinquent, but she was not proof against his coaxing ways.
After dinner she remarked to her husband, “You will be sorry to
hear that Guy has had one of his worst bouts again. Nurse said he
screamed steadily for more than half-an-hour.”
“What did you do?”
“I was out at the time, doing some shopping. But when I came
back, after letting him know how grieved I was, I did as you say,
changed his thoughts and did my best to give him a happy day.”
“How did you let him know you were grieved?”
“I looked at him in a way he quite understood, and you should
have seen the deliciously coaxing, half-ashamed look he shot up at
me. What eyes he has!”
“Yes, the little monkey! and no doubt he measured their effect on
his mother; you must allow me to say that my theory certainly is not
to give him a happy day after an outbreak of this sort.”
“Why, I thought your whole plan was to change his thoughts, to
keep him so well occupied with pleasant things that he does not
dwell on what agitated him.”
“Yes, but did you not tell me the passion was over when you
found him?”
“Quite over, he was as good as gold.”
“Well, the thing we settled on was to avert a threatened outbreak
by a pleasant change of thought; and to do so in order that, at last,
the habit of these outbreaks may be broken. Don’t you see, that is a
very different thing from pampering him with a pleasant day when he
has already pampered himself with the full indulgence of his
passion?”
“Pampered himself! Why, you surely don’t think those terrible
scenes give the poor child any pleasure. I always thought he was a
deal more to be pitied than we.”
“Indeed I do. Pleasure is perhaps hardly the word; but that the
display of temper is a form of self indulgence, there is no doubt at all.
You, my dear, are too amiable to know what a relief it is to us irritable
people to have a good storm and clear the air.”
“Nonsense, Edward! But what should I have done? What is the
best course after the child has given way?”
“I think we must, as you suggested before, consider how we
ourselves are governed. Estrangement, isolation, are the immediate
consequences of sin, even of what may seem a small sin of
harshness and selfishness.”
“Oh, but don’t you think that is our delusion? that God is loving us
all the time, and it is we who estrange ourselves?”
“Without doubt; and we are aware of the love all the time, but,
also, we are aware of a cloud between us and it; we know we are out
of favour. We know, too, there is only one way back, through the fire.
It is common to speak of repentance as a light thing, rather pleasant
than otherwise; but it is searching and bitter: so much so, that the
Christian soul dreads to sin, even the sin of coldness, from an almost
cowardly dread of the anguish of repentance, purging fire though it
is.”
Mrs. Belmont could not clear her throat to answer for a minute.
She had never before had such a glimpse into her husband’s soul.
Here were deeper things in the spiritual life than any of which she yet
knew.
“Well then, dear, about Guy; must he feel this estrangement, go
through this fire?”
“I think so, in his small degree; but he must never doubt our love.
He must see and feel that it is always there, though under a cloud of
sorrow which he only can break through.”
Guy’s lapse prepared the way for further lapses. Not two days
passed before he was again hors de combat. The boy, his outbreak
over, was ready at once to emerge into the sunshine. Not so his
mother. His most bewitching arts met only with sad looks and
silence.
He told his small scraps of nursery news, looking in vain for the
customary answering smile and merry words. He sidled up to his
mother, and stroked her cheek; that did not do, so he stroked her
hand; then her gown; no answering touch, no smile, no word;
nothing but sorrowful eyes when he ventured to raise his own. Poor
little fellow! The iron was beginning to enter; he moved a step or two
away from his mother, and raised to hers eyes full of piteous doubt
and pleading. He saw love, which could not reach him, and sorrow,
which he was just beginning to comprehend. But his mother could
bear it no longer: she got up hastily and left the room. Then the little
boy, keeping close to the wall, as if even that were something to
interpose between him and this new sense of desolation, edged off
to the furthest corner of the room, and sinking on the floor with a sad,
new quietness, sobbed out lonely sobs; Nurse had had her lesson,
and although she, too, was crying for her boy, nobody went near him
but Flo. A little arm was passed round his neck; a hot little cheek
pressed against his curls:
“Don’t cry, Guy!” two or three times, and when the sobs came all
the thicker, there was nothing for it but that Flo must cry too; poor
little outcasts!
At last bedtime came, and his mother; but her face had still that
sad, far-away look, and Guy could see she had been crying. How he
longed to spring up and hug her and kiss her as he would have done
yesterday. But somehow he dared not; and she never smiled nor
spoke, and yet never before had Guy known how his mother loved
him.
She sat in her accustomed chair by the little white bed, and
beckoned the little boy in his nightgown to come and say his prayers.
He knelt at his mother’s knee as usual, and then she laid her hands
upon him.
“‘Our Father’—oh, mother, mo—o—ther, mother!” and a torrent of
tears drowned the rest, and Guy was again in his mother’s arms, and
she was raining kisses upon him, and crying softly with him.
Next morning his father received him with open arms.
“So my poor little boy had a bad day yesterday!”
Guy hung his head and said nothing.
“Would you like me to tell you how you may help ever having quite
such another bad day?”
“Oh yes, please, father; I thought I couldn’t help.”
“Can you tell when the ‘Cross-man’ is coming?”
Guy hesitated. “Sometimes, I think. I get all hot.”
“Well, the minute you find he’s coming, even if you have begun to
cry, say, ‘Please excuse me, Nurse,’ and run downstairs, and then
four times round the garden as fast as you can, without stopping to
take breath!”
“What a good way! Shall I try it now?”
“Why, the ‘Cross-man’ isn’t there now. But I’ll tell you a secret: he
always goes away if you begin to do something else as hard as you
can; and if you can remember to run away from him round the
garden, you’ll find he won’t run after you; at the very worst, he won’t
run after you more than once round!”
“Oh, father, I’ll try! What fun! See if I don’t beat him! Won’t I just
give Mr. ‘Cross-man’ a race! He shall be quite out of breath before
we get round the fourth time.”
The vivid imagination of the boy personified the foe, and the
father jumped with his humour. Guy was eager for the fray; the
parents had found an ally in their boy; the final victory was surely
within appreciable distance.
FOOTNOTES:
[21] To state the case more accurately, certain cell
connections appear to be established by habitual traffic in
certain thoughts; but there is so much danger of over-
stating or of localising mental operations, that perhaps it is
safe to convey the practical outcome of this line of research
in a more or less figurative way—as, the wearing of a field-
path; the making of a bridge; a railway, &c.
CHAPTER II
ATTENTION.
“But now for the real object of this letter (does it take your breath
away to get four sheets?) We want you to help us about Kitty. My
husband and I are at our wits’ end, and should most thankfully take
your wise head and kind heart into counsel. I fear we have been
laying up trouble for ourselves and for our little girl. The ways of
nature are, there is no denying it, very attractive in all young
creatures, and it is so delightful to see a child do as ‘’tis its nature to,’
that you forget that Nature, left to herself, produces a waste, be it
never so lovely. Our little Kitty’s might so easily become a wasted
life.
“But not to prose any more, let me tell you the history of Kitty’s
yesterday—one of her days is like the rest, and you will be able to
see where we want your help.
“Figure to yourself the three little heads bent over ‘copy-books’ in
our cheery schoolroom. Before a line is done, up starts Kitty.
“‘Oh, mother, may I write the next copy—s h e l l? “Shell” is so
much nicer than—k n o w, and I’m so tired of it.’
“‘How much have you done?’
“‘I have written it three whole times, mother, and I really can’t do it
any more! I think I could do—s h e l l. “Shell” is so pretty!’
“By-and-by we read; but Kitty cannot read—can’t even spell the
words (don’t scold us, we know it is quite wrong to spell in a reading
lesson), because all the time her eyes are on a smutty sparrow on
the topmost twig of the poplar; so she reads, ‘W i t h, birdie!’ We do
sums; a short line of addition is to poor Kitty a hopeless and an
endless task. ‘Five and three make—nineteen,’ is her last effort,
though she knows quite well how to add up figures. Half a scale on
the piano, and then—eyes and ears for everybody’s business but her
own. Three stitches of hemming, and idle fingers plait up the hem or
fold the duster in a dozen shapes. I am in the midst of a thrilling
history talk: ‘So the Black Prince——’ ‘Oh, mother, do you think we
shall go to the sea this year? My pail is quite ready, all but the
handle, but I can’t find my spade anywhere!’
“And thus we go on, pulling Kitty through her lessons somehow;
but it is a weariness to herself and all of us, and I doubt if the child
learns anything except by bright flashes. But you have no notion how
quick the little monkey is. After idling through a lesson she will
overtake us at a bound at the last moment, and thus escape the
wholesome shame of being shown up as the dunce of our little party.
“Kitty’s dawdling ways, her restless desire for change of
occupation, her always wandering thoughts, lead to a good deal of
friction, and spoil our schoolroom party, which is a pity, for I want the
children to enjoy their lessons from the very first. What do you think
the child said to me yesterday in the most coaxing pretty way?
‘There are so many things nicer than lessons! Don’t you think so,
mother?’ Yes, dear aunt, I see you put your finger on those unlucky
words ‘coaxing, pretty way,’ and you look, if you do not say, that
awful sentence of yours about sin being bred of allowance. Isn’t that
it? It is quite true; we are in fault. Those butterfly ways of Kitty’s were
delicious to behold until we thought it time to set her to work, and
then we found that we should have been training her from her
babyhood. Well,
‘If you break your plaything yourself, dear,
Don’t you cry for it all the same?
I don’t think it is such a comfort
To have only oneself to blame.’
“So, like a dear, kind aunt, don’t scold us, but help us to do better. Is
Kitty constant to anything? you ask. Does she stick to any of the
‘many things so much nicer than lessons’? I am afraid that here, too,
our little girl is ‘unstable as water.’ And the worst of it is, she is all