f
books which are worth reading, both in prose and verse. These the
children read in school and out of school, and are thus brought into
communication with other minds, with other times, with other lands.
They are also accustomed to talk freely to one another about the
books that they are reading. Whatever lesson may be going on, they
are encouraged to ask questions about the matter in hand, and even to
express their own views about it. They go out into the playground in
groups and make up games and plays, discussing things freely among
themselves. When they are preparing to act an historical scene or a
passage from some dramatic author, they hold a sort of informal
parliament, in which the actors are selected and various important
questions are provisionally settled. They write letters in school to
real people. The older girls take the little ones in hand, and talk
to them and draw them out. When an interesting phenomenon is noticed,
_e.g._ in a Nature ramble, the children are accustomed to discuss it
in groups, and to try to think out among themselves its cause and
its meaning. Gossip is of course discouraged; but it is scarcely
necessary for Egeria to proscribe it; for idle talk has no attraction
for children who are allowed to talk freely and frankly, at all times
and in all places, about things that are really worth discussing.
Life is full of interest for children who are allowed, as these are,
to take an active interest in it; and subjects of conversation are
therefore ever presenting themselves, in school and out of school,
to the happy children of Utopia. This means that the life of each
individual child is overflowing through many channels, an overflow
which will carry the out-welling life into the lives of other living
beings--human and infra-human, actual and imaginary--and even beyond
these, when it has been met and reinforced by other surging currents,
into the impersonal life of Humanity and of Nature.

(2) _The Dramatic Instinct_.

Whatever else young children may be, they are all born actors; and in
a school which bases its scheme of education on the actualities of
child life, it is but natural that the dramatic instinct should be
fostered in every possible way. "Work while you work, and play
while you play," is one of those trite maxims which have been
unintelligently repeated till they have lost whatever value they may
once have possessed. "Work while you play, and play while you work,"
seems to