s high praise. It fits only the play
under right conditions. Fortunately these are such that every mother
can command them. There are three essentials: (1) Freedom, (2)
Sympathy, (3) Right materials.

[Sidenote: Freedom]

(1) Freedom is the first essential, and here the child of poverty
often has the advantage of the child of wealth. There are few things
in the poverty-stricken home too good for him to play with; in
its narrow quarters, he becomes, perforce, a part of all domestic
activity. He learns the uses of household utensils, and his play
merges by imperceptible degrees into true, healthful work.

In the home of wealth, however, there is no such freedom, no such
richness of opportunity. The child of wealth has plenty of toys, but
few real things to play with. He is shut out of the common activity of
the family, and shut in to the imitation activity of his nursery. He
never gets his small hands on realities, but in his elegant clothes is
confined to the narrow conventional round that is falsely supposed to
be good for him.

Froebel insists upon the importance of the child's dress being
loose, serviceable, and inconspicuous, so that he may play as much
as possible without consciousness of the restrictions of dress.
The playing child should also have, as we have noticed in the first
section, the freedom of the outside world. This does not mean merely
that he should go out in his baby-buggy, or take a ride in the park,
but that he should be able to play out-of-doors, to creep on the
ground, to be a little open-air savage, and play with nature as he
finds it.

[Sidenote: Sympathy]

(2) Sympathy is much more likely to rise spontaneously in the mother's
breast for the child's troubles than for the child's joys. She will
stop to take him up and pet him when he is hurt, no matter how busy
she is, but she too often considers it waste of time to enter into his
plays with him; yet he needs sympathy in joy as much as in sorrow. Her
presence, her interest in what he is doing, doubles his delight in it
and doubles its value to him. Moreover, it offers her opportunity for
that touch and direction now and then, which may transform a rambling
play, without much sequence or meaning, into a consciously useful
performance, a dramatization, perhaps, of some of the child's
observations, or an investigation into the nature of things.

(3) Right Material. Even given freedom and sympathy, the child needs
something more in order t