act that hundreds of children in America send in
contributions, month after month, year after year, to this magazine.
Even more significant is it that they prepare these contributions with
all the conscientious care of grown-up writers or painters to whom
writing or painting is the chiefest reality of life. So whole-heartedly
do the children play at being what their elders are!

[Illustration: THE DEAR DELIGHTS OF PLAYING ALONE]

An Italian woman once asked me, "The American children--what do they
employ as toys?"

I could only reply, "Almost anything; almost everything!"

When we are furthest from seeing the toy possibilities of a thing, they
see it. I have among my treasures a libation cup and a _ushabti_
figurine--votive offerings from the Temple of Osiris, at Abydos.

A short time ago a little boy friend of mine lighted upon them in their
safe retreat. "What are these?" he inquired.

"They came from Egypt--" I began.

"Oh, _really_ and _truly_?" he cried. "_Did_ they come from the Egypt in
the poem--

"'Where among the desert sands
Some deserted city stands,
There I'll come when I'm a man
With a camel caravan;
And in a corner find the toys
Of the old Egyptian boys'?"

He spent a happy hour playing with the libation cup and the _ushabti_--
trophies of one of the most remarkable explorations of our era. I did
not tell him what they were. He knew concerning them all he needed to
know--that they could be "employed as toys." Perhaps the very tiniest of
the "old Egyptian boys" had known only this, too.

"Little girls do not play with dolls in these days!" is a remark that
has been made with great frequency of late years. Those of us who have
many friends among little girls often wonder what is at the basis of
this rumor. There have always been girls who did not care for dolls. In
the old-fashioned story for girls there was invariably one such. In
"Little Women," as we all recall, it was Jo. No doubt the persons who
say that little girls no longer play with dolls count among their
childish acquaintances a disproportionate number of Jos. Playing with
dolls would seem to be too fundamentally little-girlish ever to fall
into desuetude.

"Girls, as well as boys, play with dogs in these days!" is another
plaintive cry we often hear. But were there ever days when this was not
the case? From that far-off day when Iseult "had always a little brachet
with her that Tristram gave her the first time that ever she came