n opened and my other less juvenile
"things" surveyed, the child turned to her own treasures. "There are the
two puzzles," she said, "and there is the big doll that can say 'Papa'
and 'Mamma,' and there is the paper doll, with lovely patterns and
pieces to make more clothes out of for it, and there is a game papa just
_loved_. Perhaps you'd like to play _that_ best, too, 'cause you are
sick, too?" she said tentatively.

I assented, and the little girl arranged the game on the table beside my
bed, and explained its "rules" to me. We played at it most happily until
my nurse, coming in, told my new-made friend that she must "say 'Good-
bye' now."

My visitor at once collected her toys and prepared to go. At the door
she turned. "Good-bye," she said, again dropping her prim courtesy. "I
have had a very pleasant time."

"So have I!" I exclaimed.

And I had had. "She was so entertaining," I said to my nurse, "and her
game was so interesting!"

"It is not an uncommon game," my nurse remarked, with a smile; "and she
is just an ordinary, nice child!"

America is full of ordinary, nice children who beguile their elders into
playing with them games that are not uncommon. How much "pleasant time"
is thereby spent!

"Where do American children learn to expect grown people to play with
them?" an Englishwoman once asked me. "In the kindergarten?"

Undoubtedly they do. In no country except Germany is the kindergarten so
integral a part of the national life as it is in America. In our cities,
rich and poor alike send their children to kindergartens. Not only in
the public and the private schools, but also in the social settlements,
and even in the Sunday-schools, we have kindergarten departments. In the
rural schools the teachers train the little "beginners" in accordance
with kindergarten principles. Even to places far away from any schools
at all the kindergarten penetrates. Only yesterday I saw a book, written
by a kindergartner, dedicated to "mothers on the rolling prairie, the
far-off rancho, the rocky island, in the lonely light-house, the
frontier settlement, the high-perched mining-camp," who, distant indeed
from school kindergartens and their equipment, might wish help in making
out of what materials they have well-equipped home kindergartens.

"Come, let us play with the children," the apostles of Froebel teach us.
And, "Come, let us ask the grown-ups to play with us," they would seem
unconsciously to instruct the c