in that of dear mother Nature, and learn his
first baby lessons without any meddlesome middleman; who is cradled in
sweet sounds "from early morn to dewy eve," lulled to his morning nap
by hum of crickets and bees, and to his night's slumber by the sighing
of the wind, the plash of waves, or the ripple of a river. He is a
part of the "shining web of creation," learning to spell out the
universe letter by letter as he grows sweetly, serenely, into a
knowledge of its laws.

I have a good deal of sympathy for the little people during their
first eight or ten years, when they are just beginning to learn life's
lessons, and when the laws which govern them must often seem so
strange and unjust. It is not an occasion for a big burning sympathy,
perhaps, but for a tender little one, with a half smile in it, as we
think of what we were, and "what in young clothes we hoped to be, and
of how many things have come across;" for childhood is an eternal
promise which no man ever keeps.

The child has a right to a place of his own, to things of his own, to
surroundings which have some relation to his size, his desires, and
his capabilities.

How should we like to live, half the time, in a place where the piano
was twelve feet tall, the door knobs at an impossible height, and the
mantel shelf in the sky; where every mortal thing was out of reach
except a collection of highly interesting objects on dressing-tables
and bureaus, guarded, however, by giants and giantesses, three times
as large and powerful as ourselves, forever saying, "mustn't touch;"
and if we did touch we should be spanked, and have no other method of
revenge save to spank back symbolically on the inoffensive persons of
our dolls?

Things in general are so disproportionate to the child's stature, so
far from his organs of prehension, so much above his horizontal line
of vision, so much ampler than his immediate surroundings, that there
is, between him and all these big things, a gap to be filled only by
a microcosm of playthings which give him his first object-lessons. In
proof of which let him see a lady richly dressed, he hardly notices
her; let him see a doll in similar attire, he will be ravished with
ecstasy. As if to show that it was the disproportion of the sizes
which unfitted him to notice the lady, the larger he grows the bigger
he wants his toys, till, when his wish reaches to life-sizes, good-by
to the trumpery, and onward with realities.[1]

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