philosopher dries into a
skeleton like that he investigates, unless love teaches him. He is
blind among his microscopes, unless he sees in the humblest human soul
a revelation that dwarfs all the world beside. While he grows gray in
ignorance among his crucibles, every girlish mother is being
illuminated by every kiss of her child. That house is so far sacred,
which holds within its walls this new-born heir of eternity. But to
dwell on these high mysteries would take us into depths beyond the
present needs of mother or of infant, and it is better that the greater
part of the baby-life should be that of an animated toy.

Perhaps it is well for all of us that we should live mostly on the
surfaces of things and should play with life, to avoid taking it too
hard. In a nursery the youngest child is a little more than a doll, and
the doll is a little less than a child. What spell does fancy weave on
earth like that which the one of these small beings performs for the
other? This battered and tattered doll, this shapeless, featureless,
possibly legless creature, whose mission it is to be dragged by one
arm, or stood upon its head in the bathing-tub, until it finally
reverts to the rag-bag whence it came,--what an affluence of breathing
life is thrown around it by one touch of dawning imagination! Its
little mistress will find all joy unavailing without its sympathetic
presence, will confide every emotion to its pen-and-ink ears, and will
weep passionate tears if its extremely soiled person is pricked when
its clothes are mended. What psychologist, what student of the human
heart, has ever applied his subtile analysis to the emotions of a child
toward her doll?

I read lately the charming autobiography of a little girl of eight
years, written literally from her own dictation. Since "Pet Marjorie" I
have seen no such actual self-revelation on the part of a child. In the
course of her narration she describes, with great precision and
correctness, the travels of the family through Europe in the preceding
year, assigning usually the place of importance to her doll, who
appears simply as "My Baby." Nothing can be more grave, more accurate,
more serious than the whole history, but nothing in it seems quite so
real and alive as the doll. "When we got to Nice, I was sick. The next
morning the doctor came, and he said I had something that was very much
like scarlet fever. Then I had Annie take care of baby, and keep her
away, for I wa