If you are skeptical, let me beseech you to join the children in a Free Kindergarten, and play with them.  You will be convinced, not through your head, perhaps, but through your heart.  I remember converting such a grim female once!  You know Henry James says, “Some women are unmarried by choice, and others by chance, but Olive Chancellor was unmarried by every implication of her being.”  Now, this predestinate spinster acquaintance of mine, well nigh spoiled by years of school-teaching in the wrong spirit, was determined to think kindergarten play simply a piece of nauseating frivolity.  She tried her best, but, kept in the circle with the children five successive days, she relaxed so completely that it was with the utmost difficulty that she kept herself from being a butterfly or a bird.  It is always so; no one can resist the unconscious happiness of children.

As for the good that comes to grown people from playing with children in this joyous freedom and with this deep earnestness of purpose, it is beyond all imagination.  If I had a daughter who was frivolous, or worldly, or selfish, or cold, or unthoughtful,—­who regarded life as a pleasantry, or fell into the still more stupid mistake of thinking it not worth living,—­I should not (at first) make her read the Bible, or teach in the Sunday-school, or call on the minister, or request the prayers of the congregation, but I should put her in a good Kindergarten Training School.  No normal young woman can resist the influence of the study of childhood and the daily life among little children, especially the children of the poor:  it is irresistible.

Oh, these tiny teachers!  If we only learned from them all we might, instead of feeling ourselves over-wise!  I never look down into the still, clear pool of a child’s innocent, questioning eyes without thinking:  “Dear little one, it must be ‘give and take’ between thee and me.  I have gained something here in all these years, but thou hast come from thence more lately than have I; thou hast a treasure that the years have stolen from me—­share it with me!”

Let us endeavor, then, to make the child’s life objective to him.  Let us unlock to him the significance of family, social, and national relationships, so that he may grow into sympathy with them.  He loves the symbol which interprets his nature to himself, and in his eager play, he pictures the life he longs to understand.

If we could make such education continuous, if we could surround the child in his earlier years with such an atmosphere of goodness, beauty, and wisdom, none can doubt that he would unconsciously grow into harmony and union with the All-Good, the All-Beautiful, and the All-Wise.

CHILDREN’S PLAYTHINGS

“Books cannot teach what toys inculcate.”

In the preceding chapter we discussed Froebel’s plays, and found that the playful spirit which pervades all the kindergarten exercises must not be regarded as trivial, since it has a philosophic motive and a definite, earnest purpose.