“You are very pretty”—­she says, we will suppose, addressing the dolls—­“and you look very amiable.  I suppose you are very amiable.”

Then, turning to the children, she asks, in a confidential undertone, “Do they ever get into disputes and quarrels?”

“Sometimes,” says one of the children, entering at once into the idea of the teacher.

“Ah!” the teacher exclaims, turning again to the dolls.  “I hear that you dispute and quarrel sometimes, and I am very sorry for it.  That is very foolish.  It is only silly little children that we expect will dispute and quarrel.  I should not have supposed it possible in the case of such young ladies as you.  It is a great deal better to be yielding and kind.  If one of you says something that the other thinks is not true, let it pass without contradiction; it is foolish to dispute about it.  And so if one has any thing that the other wants, it is generally much better to wait for it than to quarrel.  It is hateful to quarrel.  Besides, it spoils your beauty.  When children are quarrelling they look like little furies.”

The teacher may go on in this way, and give a long moral lecture to the dolls in a tone of mock gravity, and the children will listen to it with the most profound attention; and it will have a far greater influence upon them than the same admonitions addressed directly to them.

So effectually, in fact, will this element of play in the transaction open their hearts to the reception of good counsel, that even direct admonitions to them will be admitted with it, if the same guise is maintained; for the teacher may add, in conclusion, addressing now the children themselves with the same mock solemnity: 

“That is a very bad fault of your children—­very bad, indeed.  And it is one that you will find very hard to correct.  You must give them a great deal of good counsel on the subject, and, above all, you must be careful to set them a good example yourselves.  Children always imitate what they see in their mothers, whether it is good or bad.  If you are always amiable and kind to one another, they will be so too.”

The thoughtful mother, in following out the suggestions here given, will see at once how the interest which the children take in their dolls, and the sense of reality which they feel in respect to all their dealings with them, opens before her a boundless field in respect to modes of reaching and influencing their minds and hearts.

The Ball itself made to teach Carefulness.

There is literally no end to the modes by which persons having the charge of young children can avail themselves of their vivid imaginative powers in inculcating moral lessons or influencing their conduct.  A boy, we will suppose, has a new ball.  Just as he is going out to play with it his father takes it from him to examine it, and, after turning it round and looking at it attentively on every side, holds it up to his