then only beginning. And the
pity of it is that this element of heredity, this reproduction of the
fathers in the children, which might be used to redeem the new-forming
personality from the heritage of past commonness or impurity, is
simply left to take its course for the further establishing and
confirmation of it. Was there ever a group of school children who did
not leave the real school to make a play school, setting up a box for
one of their number to sit on and "take off" the teacher? Was there
ever a child who did not play "church," and force the improvised
"papa" into the pulpit? Were there ever children who did not "buy"
things from fancied stalls in every corner of the nursery, after they
had once seen an elder drive a trade in the market? The point is this:
the child's personality grows; growth is always by action; he clothes
upon himself the scenes of the parent's life and acts them out; so he
grows in what he is, what he understands, and what he is able to
perform.

In order to be of more direct service to observers of games of this
character, let me give a short account of an observation of the kind
made some time ago--one of the simplest of many actual situations
which my two little girls, Helen and Elizabeth, have acted out
together. It is a very commonplace case, a game the elements of which
are evident in their origin; but I choose this rather than one more
complex, since observers are usually not psychologists, and they find
the elementary the more instructive.

On May 2 I was sitting on the porch alone with the children--the two
mentioned above, aged respectively four and a half and two and a half
years. Helen, the elder, told Elizabeth that she was her little baby;
that is, Helen became "mamma," and Elizabeth the "baby." The younger
responded by calling her sister "mamma," and the play began.

"You have been asleep, baby. Now it is time to get up," said mamma.
Baby rose from the floor--first falling down in order to rise!--was
seized upon by "mamma," taken to the railing to an imaginary
washstand, and her face washed by rubbing. Her articles of clothing
were then named in imagination, and put on, one by one, in the most
detailed and interesting fashion. During all this "mamma" kept up a
stream of baby talk to her infant: "Now your stockings, my darling;
now your skirt, sweetness--O! no--not yet--your shoes first," etc.,
etc. Baby acceded to all the details with more than the docility which
rea