nces are written
wearily and without pains, but to write the name of a picture you have
painted, at the bottom of it, or to write something that Cinderella's
Godmother said, or bit by bit to write a letter, will be having a
purpose that gives life to an apparently meaningless act, and
thoroughness to the effort.

In handwork, too, at this stage, practice takes an important place: a
child is willing to hem, to try certain brush strokes, to cut evenly,
and later on to use his cardboard knife to effect for the sake of a
future result if he has already experimented freely. This is in full
harmony with the spirit of play, when we think of the practiced
"strokes" and "throws" of the later games, but it is a more advanced
quality of play, because there is the beginning of a purpose which is
separated from immediate pleasure in the activity, there is the hint of
an end in view though it is a child's end, and not the adult or economic
one.

The training of the mother tongue can be made very effective by means
of games: in the days when children's parties were simple, and family
life was united, language games in the long dark evenings gave to many a
grip of words and expressions. Children learnt to describe accurately,
to be very fastidious in choice of words, to ask direct questions, to
give verbal form to thought, all through the stress of such games--Man
and his Shadow, Clumps, Subject and Object, Russian Scandal, the
Minister's Cat, I see a Light, Charades, and acting of all kinds. No
number of picture talks, oral compositions, or observations can compete
in real value with these games, because behind them was a purpose or
need for language that compelled the greatest efforts.

Physical development and its adjustment to mental control owes its
greatest stimulus to games. When physical strength, speed, or nimble
adjustability is the pivot upon which the game depends, special muscles
are made subservient to will: behind the game there is the stimulus of
strong emotion, and here is the greatest factor in establishing
permanent associations between body and mind; psychologists see in many
of these games of physical activity the evolution of the race: drill
pure and simple has its place partly in the same sense as "practice" in
number or handwork, and partly as a corrective to our fallacious system
of education by listening, instead of by activity: and we cannot in a
lifetime acquire the powers of the race except by concentrat