Imitation
Illustration★★★When a boy is learning to write, his master either gives him a copy-slip or else writes the first line in the page for him. Now, I have often seen a boy write the next line with some care, looking at the letters he had to copy. But when he came to the third line, instead of looking at his copy, he looked only at his own writing just above. And what came of that? Why, he copied all his faults, and made more too, so that every line down the page was worse than the one before it. He never tried to make each line more like his copy. Dr. J. M. Freeman.
The point
A boy learning to write copies each new line from his own previous line instead of the master copy, compounding his faults -- warning that imitating flawed examples instead of the true standard multiplies error.