g and too hard. Read
it, and you'll see. But," she sagely added, "if you can find anything
that is suitable, and can persuade the other children to act in it, I
will help you all I can."

That evening, at home, the little girl read "A Midsummer-Night's Dream."
"Mamma," she suddenly cried, as she neared the end, "my teacher says
this is too long and too hard for us children to do. But we _could_ do
the play that the people _in it_ do--don't you think? It is _very_
short, and all the children will like it because it is about poor
Pyramus and Thisbe, that we have all read about in school. It isn't
_just_ the same as the way it was in the story we read; but it is about
them--and the wall, and the lion, and everything! Don't you think we
could do it? They did the fairy part when I saw it at Cousin Rose's
school, and not this at all. But couldn't _we_?"

"I did not like to discourage her," my friend said when she related the
tale to me. "_All_ the other children were willing and eager to do it,
so her teacher couldn't refuse, after what she had said, to help them. I
helped with the rehearsals, too, and I doubt if the teacher or I ever
laughed so much in all our lives as we did at that time--when there were
no children about! The children were so sweet and serious over their
play! They acted it as they would have acted a play on the subject of
Pyramus and Thisbe written especially for them. _They_ weren't funny.
No; they were perfectly lovely. What was so irresistibly comic, of
course, was the difference between their performance and one's
remembrance of regular performances of it--to say nothing of one's
thoughts as to what Shakespeare would have said about it. How those
children will laugh when they are grown up! They will have something to
laugh at that will last them a lifetime. But _poor_ Shakespeare!"

I did not echo these final words of my friend. For does not Shakespeare
rather particularly like to bless us with the laugh that lasts a
lifetime, even if--perhaps especially if--it be at our own expense?

Books are such integral parts of the lives of present-day children,
especially in America. Their elders appreciate, as possibly the grown-
ups of former times did not quite so fully appreciate, the importance of
books in the education of the boys and girls. It may even be that we
over-emphasize it a bit. We send the children to the book-shelves for
help in work and for assistance in play. In effect, we say to them,
"