who have just read "Robin Hood"
do not say: "Wouldn't it be fun to play that _we_ are Robin Hood and his
Merry Men, and that our grove is Sherwood Forest?" They are more apt to
say: "It would be good sport for _us_--shooting with bows and arrows. We
might get some, and fix up a target somewhere and practise." The circle
of little girls who have read "Mary's Meadow" do not propose that they
play at being Mary. They decide instead upon doing, in their own proper
persons, what Mary did in hers. They can play together, the children of
our Nation, but they seem unable to "pretend" together. They are perhaps
too self-conscious.

It is a significant circumstance that yearly there are published in
America a large number of books for children telling them "how to make"
various things. A great part of their play consists in making something
--from a sunken garden to an air-ship.

I recently had a letter from a boy in which he said: "The boys here are
getting wireless sets. We have to buy part of the things; but we make as
many of them as we can."

And how assiduously they attempt to make as many as they can of the
other things we grown-ups make! They imitate our play; and, in a spirit
of play, they contrive to copy to its last and least detail our work. If
we play golf or tennis, they also play these games. Are we painters of
pictures or writers of books, they too aspire to paint or to write!

It cannot be denied that we encourage the children in this "endless
imitation." We not only have diminutive golf sticks and tennis rackets
manufactured for their use as soon as they would play our games; when
they show signs of toying with our work, we promptly set about providing
them with the proper means to that end.

One of our best-known magazines for children devotes every month a
considerable number of its pages to stories and poems and drawings
contributed by children. Furthermore, it offers even such rewards as we
grown-up writers and painters are offered for "available" products.
Moreover, the young contributors are instructed in the intricacies of
literary and artistic etiquette. They are taught how to prepare
manuscripts and drawings for the editorial eye. The "rules" given these
children are identical with the regulations governing well-conducted
grown-up writers and artists--excepting that the children are commanded
to "state age," and "have the contribution submitted indorsed as wholly
original!"

It is a noteworthy f