cts and their habit of endowing them with their
own sensations may be made of use in teaching them care and
gentleness. They are naturally prone to sympathise with the doll that
has been crushed or the book that has been torn. They will learn very
easily to be kind to a pet animal and to be solicitous for its
feelings, and the lesson so learnt will be applied to inanimate
objects as well.

There is, however, another side to the question. It is true that if
the child is not to be over-stimulated upon the psychical side, we
must see to it that his play, for the most part, is not dependent upon
the participation of grown-up persons. In practice this excessive
stimulation is the common fault with which we meet. There are few
children in well-to-do homes, with loving mothers and devoted nurses,
who suffer from too little mothering and nursing. Too many show signs
of too much. To observe the opposite fault we must seek the infants
and children who for a long time are inmates of institutions,
orphanages, infirmaries, hospitals, and so forth. In such surroundings
the mental life of the child may languish. His physical wants are
cared for, but there the matter ends. In a rigid routine he is washed
and fed, but he may not be talked to or played with or stimulated in
any way. His day is spent passively lying in his cot, unnoticed and
unnoticing. I have seen a poor child of three years just released from
such a life, and after eighteen months returned to his mother, unable
to talk and almost unable to walk, crying pitifully at the novelty and
strangeness of the noisy life to which he had returned, worried by
contact with the other children, and without any desire or power to
occupy himself in the home. For an hour in the day mothers may devote
themselves wholeheartedly to the children, and if they set them
romping till they are tired out, so much the better. In the garden or
in an airy room with the windows open, a game with a ball or a toy
balloon, or a game of hide-and-seek, will be all to the good, and the
children may climb and be rolled over and swung about to their heart's
content. With an only child, especially with a child whose home is in
town, and whose outings are limited to a sedate airing in the park,
such free play is especially necessary. It may help more than anything
else to quiet restless minds and tempers that are on edge all day long
from excessive repression.

On the other hand, those forms of entertainment w