into
Cornwell," to the time when Dora cuddled Jip, even down to our own day,
when the heroine of "Queed" walks forth with her Behemoth, girls both in
fact and in fiction have played with dogs; played with them no less than
boys. This proclivity on the part of the little girls of our Nation is
not distinctively American, nor especially childish, nor particularly
girl-like; it is merely human.

In few activities do the children of our Nation reveal what we call the
"American sense of humor" so clearly as in their play. Slight ills, and
even serious misfortunes, they instinctively endeavor to lift and carry
with a laugh. It would be difficult to surpass the gay heroism to which
they sometimes attain.

Most of us remember the little hunchbacked boy in "Little Men" who, when
the children played "menagerie," chose the part of the dromedary.
"Because," he explained, "I have a hump on my back!"

Among my acquaintances there is a little girl who is blind. One day I
invited her to go picnicking with a party of normal children, one of
whom was her elder sister. She was accustomed to the company of children
who could see, and she showed a ready disposition to join in the games
of the other picnickers. Her sister stayed close beside her and guarded
and guided her.

"Let's play blind man's buff," one of the children heedlessly suggested
after a long course of "drop-the-handkerchief."

The other children with seeing eyes instantly looked at the child who
was sightless, and whispered, "Ssh! You'll hurt her feelings!"

But the little blind girl scrambled eagerly to her feet. "Yes," she
said, brightly; "let's play blind man's buff! _I_ can be 'It' _all_ the
time!"

There is a phrase that has been very widely adopted by Americans.
Scarcely one of us but uses it--"playing the game." Our highest
commendation of a man or a woman has come to be, "He plays the game," or
"She plays the game." Another phrase, often upon our lips, is "according
to the rules of the game." We Americans talk of the most sacred things
of life in the vocabulary of children at play. May not this be because
the children of our Nation play so well; so much better than we grown-
ups do anything?

III

THE COUNTRY CHILD

One spring, not long ago, a friend of mine, knowing that I had a desire
to spend the summer in the "real country," said to me, "Why don't you go
to a farm somewhere in New England? Nothing could be more 'really
countrified' than t