in her first effort to induce her to persevere.

[Illustration: THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY.]

She must, moreover, not only originate, herself, modes of amusing the
imagination of her children, but must fall in with and aid those which
_they_ originate. If your little daughter is playing with her doll, look up
from your work and say a few words to the doll or the child in a grave and
serious manner, assuming that the doll is a living and sentient being. If
your boy is playing horses in the garden while you are there attending to
your flowers, ask him with all gravity what he values his horse at, and
whether he wishes to sell him. Ask him whether he ever bites, or breaks out
of his pasture; and give him some advice about not driving him too fast up
hill, and not giving him oats when he is warm. He will at once enter into
such a conversation in the most serious manner, and the pleasure of his
play will be greatly increased by your joining with him in maintaining the
illusion.

There is a still more important advantage than the temporary increase to
your children's happiness by acting on this principle. By thus joining with
them, even for a few moments, in their play, you establish a closer bond
of sympathy between your own heart and theirs, and attach them to you more
strongly than you can do by any other means. Indeed, in many cases the most
important moral lessons can be conveyed in connection with these illusions
of children, and in a way not only more agreeable but far more effective
than by any other method.

_Influence without Claim to Authority_.

Acting through the imagination of children--if the art of doing so is once
understood--will prove at once an invaluable and an inexhaustible resource
for all those classes of persons who are placed in situations requiring
them to exercise an influence over children without having any proper
authority over them; such, for example, as uncles and aunts, older brothers
and sisters, and even visitors residing more or less permanently in a
family, and desirous, from a wish to do good, of promoting the welfare and
the improvement of the younger members of it. It often happens that such
a visitor, without any actual right of authority, acquires a greater
influence over the minds of the children than the parents themselves; and
many a mother, who, with all her threatenings and scoldings, and even
punishments, can not make herself obeyed, is surprised at the absolute
ascendency whi