ok place. Tommy felt that he was beaten,
and he ceased work.

I was not very much surprised when the girls came and told me that
Tommy was shying bricks at the railway line he had been so keen on
constructing. Tommy was brought up before the assembled class, and
they voted unanimously that he be forbidden to approach within ten
yards of Play Town. Tommy grinned maliciously. That night the town
appeared to have been the victim of an earthquake.

I went to Tommy.

"Why don't you like the Play Town?" I asked.

"Because the girls are too bossy," he said. "It was my town; I began
it, and I don't see why they should be in it at all."

"And you want a Play Town all to yourself?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Right ho," I said easily. "Why not start to build one?"

His eyes lit up, and away he ran to lay his foundations. He worked
eagerly all day, but at night he seemed dissatisfied.

"I haven't got any railway or houses; Christo won't lend me a bit of
his railway, and Gerda has all the houses."

I left him to work out his problem. In the morning he solved it;
Christo wouldn't lend him any rails, but if Tommy liked he, Christo,
would run his line up to Tommy's town from the class town. Tommy
readily agreed. In a week's time Tommy's town was a suburb of the
bigger town, and Tommy was appointed President of the whole state. He
spent many an hour building his bridges and digging his tunnels. At
first he would allow no one to enter his suburb, but in a few days he
ceased to claim it as his own, and he worked as a member of the gang.

I think that most anti-social children are like Tommy: when their
self-assertion is threatened they react with hostility. The cure for
them is to direct their self-assertion to things instead of people. No
boy will try to break up a ball game if he has a rabbit hutch to
construct.

The danger is that the teacher will often step in when the boy ought to
be left to his companions. The gang is the best disciplinarian.

One day a class and I were writing five-minute essays. I would call
out a word or a phrase, and we would all start to write. The children
loved the method; it allowed so much play for originality. For
example, when I gave the word "broken" one girl wrote of her broken
doll, another of a broken tramp, another of a broken heart; a boy wrote
a witty essay on being stoney broke, another wrote of a broken window.

On this day Wolodia, a boy of eleven, did not want to writ