let; it is because "the other girls have bracelets." Not on account
of the rules that forbade father's dog the house is the small boy happy
in the nightly companionship of his dog; he takes the dog to bed with
him for the reason that "the other boys' dogs sleep with them."

Even unto honors, if they must carry them alone, children in America
would rather not be born. A little girl who lives in my neighborhood
came home from school in tears one day not long ago. Her father is a
celebrated writer. The school-teacher, happening to select one of his
stories to read aloud to the class, mentioned the fact that the author
of the story was the father of my small friend.

"But why are you crying about it, sweetheart?" her father asked. "Do you
think it's such a bad story?"

"Oh, no," the little girl answered; "it is a good enough story. But none
of the other children's fathers write stories! Why do _you_, daddy? It's
so peculiar!"

It may be that all children, whatever their nationalities, are like this
little girl. We, in America, have a fuller opportunity to become
intimately acquainted with the minds of children than have the people of
any other nation of the earth. For more completely than any other people
do American fathers and mothers make friends and companions of their
children, asking from them, first, love; then, trust; and, last of all,
the deference due them as "elders." Any child may feel as did my small
neighbor about a "peculiar" father; only a child who had been his
comrade as well as his child would so freely have voiced her feeling.

We all remember the little boy in Stevenson's poem, "My Treasures,"
whose dearest treasure, a chisel, was dearest because "very few children
possess such a thing."

Had he been an American child, that chisel would not have been a
"treasure" at all, unless all of the children possessed such a thing.

Not only do the children of our Nation want what the other children of
their circle have when they can use it; they want it even when they
cannot use it. I have a little girl friend who, owing to an accident in
her infancy, is slightly lame. Fortunately, she is not obliged to depend
upon crutches; but she cannot run about, and she walks with a
pathetically halting step.

One autumn this child came to her mother and said: "Mamma, I'd like to
go to dancing-school."

"But, my dearest, I'm afraid--I don't believe--you could learn to dance
--very well," her mother faltered.

"Oh