There are plenty of indoor occupations too for little girls which may give the same taste of solitude and silence, approaching to those simpler forms of home play which have no definite aim, no beginning and ending, no rules.  The fighting instinct is very near the surface in ambitious and energetic children, and in the play-grounds it asserts itself all the more in reaction after indoor discipline, then excitement grows, and the weaker suffer, and the stronger are exasperated by friction.  If unselfish, they feel the effort to control themselves; if selfish, they exhaust themselves and others in the battle to impose their own will.  In these moods solitude and silence, with a hoop or skipping-rope, are a saving system, and restore calmness of mind.  All that is wanted is freedom, fresh air, and spontaneous movement.  This is more evident in the case of younger children, but if it can be obtained for elder girls it is just as great a relief.  They have usually acquired more self-control, and the need does not assert itself so loudly, but it is perhaps all the greater; and in whatever way it can best be ministered to, it will repay attention and the provision that may be made for it.

One word may be merely suggested for consideration concerning games in girls’ schools, and that is the comparative value of them as to physical development.  The influence of the game in vogue in each country will always be felt, but it is worth attention that some games, as hockey, conduce to all the attitudes and movements which are least to be desired, and that others, as basket-ball, on the contrary tend—­if played with strict regard to rules—­to attitudes which are in themselves beautiful and tending to grace of movement.  This word belongs to our side of the question, not that of the children.  It belongs to our side also to see that hoops are large, and driven with a stick, not a hook, for the sake of straight backs, which are so easily bent crooked in driving a small hoop with a hook.

In connexion with movement comes the question of dancing.  Dancing comes, officially, under the heading of lessons, most earnest lessons if the professor has profound convictions of its significance.  But dancing belongs afterwards to the playtime of life.  We have outlived the grim puritanical prejudice which condemned it as wrong, and it is generally agreed that there is almost a natural need for dancing as the expression of something very deep in human nature, which seems to be demonstrated by its appearance in one form or another, amongst all races of mankind.  There is something in co-ordinated rhythmical movement, in the grace of steps, in the buoyancy of beautiful dancing which seems to make it a very perfect exercise for children and young people.  But there are dances and dances, steps and steps, and about the really beautiful there is always a touch of the severe, and a hint of the ideal.  Without these, dancing drops at once to the level of the commonplace and below it.  In general, dances which embody some characteristics of a national life have more beauty than cosmopolitan dances, but they are only seen in their perfection when performed by dancers of the race to whom their spirit belongs, or by the class for whom they are intended:  which is meant as a suggestion that little girls should not dance the hornpipe.