that we do for them is done in
order to teach them just that--to do. It is a large and many-sided and
varicolored desire, and to follow its leadings is an arduous labor; but
is there one of us who knows a child well who has not this desire, and
who does not cheerfully perform that labor? Having decided in so far as
we are able what were good to do, we try, not only to do it ourselves,
in our grown-up way, but so to train the children that they, too, may do
it, in their childish way. The various means that we find most helpful
to the end of our own doing we secure for the children,--adapting them,
simplifying them, and even re-shaping them, that the boys and girls may
use them to the full.

There is, of course, a certain impersonal quality in a great deal of
what we, in America, do for children. It is not based so much on
friendship for an individual child as on a sense of responsibility for
the well-being of all childhood, especially all childhood in our own
country. But most of what we do, after all, we do for the boys and girls
whom we know and love; and we do it because they are our friends, and we
wish them to share in the good things of our lives,--our work and our
play. To what amazing lengths we sometimes go in this "doing for" the
children of our circles!

One Saturday afternoon, only a few weeks ago, I saw at the annual
exhibit of the State Board of Health, a man, one of my neighbors, with
his little eight-year old boy. The exhibit consisted of the customary
display of charts and photographs, showing the nature of the year's work
in relation to the milk supply, the water supply, the housing of the
poor, and the prevention of contagious diseases. My neighbor is not a
specialist in any one of these matters; his knowledge is merely that of
an average good citizen. He went from one subject to the other, studying
them. His boy followed close beside him, looking where his father
looked,--if with a lesser interest at the charts, with as great an
intentness at the photographs. As they made their way about the room
given over to the exhibit, they talked, the boy asking questions, the
father endeavoring to answer them.

The small boy caught sight of me as I stood before one of the charts
relating to the prevention of contagious diseases, and ran across the
room to me. "What are _you_ looking at?" he said. "That! It shows how
many people were vaccinated, doesn't it? Come over here and see the
pictures of the calves the