Once upon a time I set about developing this father spirit in a group of little gamins whose general attitude toward the weaker sex, toward birds and flowers and insects, toward beauty in distress and wounded sensibility, was in the last degree offensive.  In the bird games we had always had a mother bird in the nest with the birdlings; we now introduced a father bird into the game.  Though the children had been only a little time in the kindergarten, and were not fully baptized into the spirit of play, still the boys were generally willing to personate the father bird, since their delight in the active and manly occupation of flying about the room seeking worms overshadowed their natural repugnance to feeding the young.  This accomplished, we played “Master Rider,” in which a small urchin capered about on a hobby horse, going through a variety of adventures, and finally returning with presents to wife and children.  This in turn became a matter of natural experience, and we moved towards our grand coup d’etat.

Once a week we had dolls’ day, when all the children who owned them brought their dolls, and the exercises were ordered with the single view of amusing and edifying them.  The picture of that circle of ragged children comes before me now and dims my eyes with its pathetic suggestions.

Such dolls!  Five-cent, ten-cent dolls; dolls with soiled clothes and dolls in a highly indecorous state of nudity; dolls whose ruddy hues of health had been absorbed into their mothers’ systems; dolls made of rags, dolls made of carrots, and dolls made of towels; but all dispensing odors of garlic in the common air.  Maternal affection, however, pardoned all limitations, and they were clasped as fondly to maternal bosoms as if they had been imported from Paris.

“Bless my soul!” might have been the unspoken comment of these tiny mothers.  “If we are only to love our offspring when handsome and well clothed, then the mother-heart of society is in a bad way!”

Dolls’ day was the day for lullabies.  I always wished I might gather a group of stony-hearted men and women in that room and see them melt under the magic of the scene.  Perhaps you cannot imagine the union of garlic and magic, nevertheless, O ye of little faith, it may exist.  The kindergarten cradle stood in the centre of the circle, and the kindergarten doll, clean, beautiful, and well dressed, lay inside the curtains, waiting to be sung to sleep with the other dolls.  One little girl after another would go proudly to the “mother’s chair” and rock the cradle, while the other children hummed their gentle lullabies.  At this juncture even the older boys (when the influence of the music had stolen in upon their senses) would glance from side to side longingly, as much as to say,—­

“O Lord, why didst Thou not make thy servant a female, that he might dandle one of these interesting objects without degradation!”