Book Jj-X- COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT OUT OF THE CRADLE INTO THE WORLD OR Self Education Through Play How thf Chilli Mill,/ ami Body Starts Going, First Nature-taiight, then Teacher-taiigltt. "if your child's to understand Things that other people do. You must let his tiny hand Carry out the same thing, too This is the reason why Baby will. Never still. Imitate whatever's bv" T. BENJAMIN ATKINS. PUBLISHED liV THE STERLING COMPANY, COLUMIJUS, OHIO. - BOSTON, MASS. 1895. N_. Kntered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1895, by T. Benjamin Atkins, In the Office of the Librarian ot Congress at Washington. To the memory of Froebel whose genius, in rec- ogmzing play as a means of education, made the stone which builders rejected the head of the corner in the Kindergarten School, is THIS Volume Dedicated : And to my dear wife, Came, the memory of whose happy childhood contribtUed much to its pages. CONTKNTS. Introduction 7 CHAPTEPv I. Prolonged Infancy and Childhood, Pro- longed Opportunity for Education 11 CHAPTER II. Play, the Natural Occupation of Childrhn. . 23 CHAPTER 111. Children's Play, the Germ of Manhood's Ways and Work 35 chapter IV. Rude Play, the Result of Incomplete Brain Development. The Child Will Out- grow It 49 chapter v. Physical Development Through Play 73 chapter VI. Mental Development Through Play 87 chapter VII. Play, a Self-Education in the Use of the Senses 107 chapter VIII. Make-Believe Play, a Self-Education of the Imagination 1 33 (5) 6 CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. Song-Play, a Self-Education of the Emo- tions '163 CHAPTER X. Mimic Play, the Natural Language of Chil- dren 177 (.CHAPTER XI. Play, a Self-Education in the Industrial Arts 215 CHAPTER XII. The Use of Toys, a Self-Education in the Use of Tools 229 chapter xiii. Imitative Play in its Origin, Spontaneous Memory 247 chapter xiv. Imitative Play in its Results, Self-Educa- tion IN Conformity to Established Custom 267 CHAPTER XV. Play, a Self-Education in Sociability 289 CHAPTER XVI. Play, a Self-Education in Morality 309 CHAPTER XVII. Play, Prophetic of Taste, Talents, and Future Pursuits 325 chapter xviit. Effect of Play on After- Life. 345 INTRODUCTION. ^ DUST pile suggested Adam made of dust, as /^*" mentioned in last Sunday's sermon ; and away the little bareheaded urchin went to play, " creating Adam out of the dust of the earth." What is it working in the mind of the child which excites the desire to dramatize every thought and word and work of older people, and to act them in play. This daring, childish endeavor is not content to imitate all the deeds of man, but even invades the attributes of Deity. Are these puerile pranks worthy of serious, scientific study? Is there method in this infantile folly, revealing world-wide and enduring truth? Does the child build wiser than he knows, and failing to make an Adam, is this untiring effort to be and to do indispensable to making a man out of himself? Little children must be understood in order to be well and wisely trained. Child -Play interprets the meaning and value of play. Beginning at the beginning, it shows how young life starts going ; and how those puerile sports practiced in the nursery minister to the growth of body and mind. It sets the common-place in a new light, and points out how the natural activity of the child becomes nature's great training school, and the wondrous way in which (7) INTRODUCTION. the child works in that school for his own intellectual, social and moral advancement. It reveals the connection between the early activity of the child and the character and career of later life, and makes a practical application of the whole to the nursery and school education. No other subject so inseparably connects the small and the great, the serious and the ludicrous. It is as rip- pling as the brook and as deep as the sea. It reveals the startling fact that the busy idler is toiling on the momentous task of self creation, and that his silly amusements have a meaning as deep and divine as human nature. The subject is old, and it is new. In the nursery it is as old and universal as childhood. In literature it is new. From time immemorial childish play has been wondered at, and laughed at, and cried at : it has been related as anecdote to flatter the pride of the fond mother, to amuse the visitor, to spice the newspaper, and to spoil the child. More recently it has been thought upon, written upon, and published upon in a fragmentary way; but no book has been ofiered the public devoted exclusively to the significance of the early natural activity of the child. This work is intended to meet a demand and supply a deficiency. It is not founded on theory, but on obser- vation and treats of what is being lived before our eyes every day. The child of our observation is not a Lord Fauntle- roy — a little angel dropped from heaven once in a thousand years as a revelation of the possibilities of children in some far-ofi" golden age ; nor is he an imp INTRODUCTION. cast up from Tartarus and reincarnated in Peck's Bad Boy — a retribution to sinful parents. But he is every child, each twelve months through his own self- advancement growing one year larger, one year wiser and one year better. The style is popular, all technical terms and meta- physical discussion being carefully avoided. Myth, parable, allegory, and anecdote are copiously used for illustration. Child life cannot be described without anecdote. The record of men's deeds is dignified as history; but children's deeds never rise above anecdote. As the acorn contains the oak, so the child's sayings and doings contain embryo history. But in the mention of children, the hi(gh) sounding part of the word is omitted, and it is called story or anecdote. The little fellow who said he could wash himself very well if he only had some one to "zamine" the corners, will some day grow into a man competent to watch his own corners in the management of political and military campaigns, or perhaps in "cornering" markets of the world. Manipulating those big corners will restore the omitted prefix, and his achievements will then be read as hi-story. In these pages the child is treated at once as the creation of God and a production of nature. The work is a Paidology — the natural science of childhood. As such the unfolding child life is set in both contrast and comparison with unfolding plant and animal life. The natural history of the human being is paralleled with other branches of natural history. 10 INTKODUCTION. Primitive man was a grown up child, and the shortest and easiest way to the study of primitive man lies through the study of child's play. The child's method of entering life and understanding the world is the best interpreter of ancient history. The doll-baby period in the life of the individual answers to a like doll-baby period in the development of the human race. The myths, mingling with ancient lore, are but the fossil dolls and mummy make-believes with which the first born children of mankind played when the world was young. In a few cases the author has yielded to the temptation and run the parallel. It has been the author's constant aim to make the work of general interest to all, and of special interest to two classes : First. To all those who were once children them- selves. Second. To parents, pastors, teachers, and all who are in any way interested in the training of those who are actually children now. CHAPTER I. Prolonged Infancy and Childhood, Prolonged Oppor= tunity for Education. " The angel bows her head, her lips press tenderly the brow of the babe that awakens vaguely to life, and the little angels sing — Rejoice, mortals, for a child is boru ! Rejoice, happy family, for here is a new guest for your fireside ! Rejoice, this little being so feeble which we bring to you is to be the joy, the dear care of the household, its hope, its love." — Selected. /^HILDREN enter life looking forward and believ- ^ ing a good time coming. " Five going on six " is a very observing period. It is also the age of ambition and purpose forming. As a rule there is nothing more lofty than the ambition of those little juveniles who have looked carefully over the whole range of human endeavor and made up their minds what they are going to be. With thought moving onward in glad expectation, they talk of the paths by which they will go out into the wide world as workers at a later period. A group of children full of hopeful presentiments were expressing their preferences : One little philanthropist would be a doctor and heal all the sick. The farm with its broad fields, cows, colts and lambs, with its orchards and freedom, seemed a paradise to another, and he would be a farmer. (11) 12 CHILD -PLAY, OR A pugnacious little hero was going to be the captain of a big ship and sail out west and bombard the Indians on the plains. The youngest of the group had seen the house put in special order for the visitor and all the luxuries brought to the table for the occasion, " Oh ! I'll be a stranger," said he, " I'll be a stranger.'' It seems this has been the position occupied by chil- dren generally. They are not understood. They are little strangers. Older people understand each other by understanding themselves. But these little folks have minds, methods, and nei^cessities of their own. In fact they are so utterly unlike other people that the law of life and liberty to the adult would be oppression and death to the child. Those aimless little hands always so busy, what are they doing ? Those curious eyes always looking, what bewildering future do they foresee? Those restless minds always asking questions, what mysterious prob- lem are they trying to solve? Children are unknown quantities, but not non-enti- ties ; very lively little units in the sum of life. What they stand for to day, no one can exactly tell. What they will stand for to-morrow is harder to tell. No scales can weigh them. No chemist can analyze them. No mathematician can tell the sum total of their lives. Who are they? What are they? Where did they come from ? What will be their mission in life? These are ques- tions all involved in deepest darkness. Each human life is a mystery unknown and unknowable here. But it is an incontestable fact that children have an exist- SELF - EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 13 ence. They are units of some kind or other in the problem of life — living, moving little things; hungry in body and hungry in mind. They must be housed, fed, clothed, loved, trained, and guided at a cost of care and patience in money, hard to estimate ; say $ . Who would dare to fill out that blank with dollars and cents? It is not to be filled with corruptible things as silver and gold. " Papa, fat will you take for me ? '' I answered, "A dollar, dear little heart," And she slept, baby, weary with play. O, that dollar meant all the world to me, The land and the sea and the sky. The lowest depths of the lowest place — The highest of all the high. Nor all the gold that ever was found In the busy world findings past Would I take for one smile of my darling's face Did I know it would be the last.'' Each babe is a new marvel; a new miracle. Around the cradle as no where else, cluster contradictions, pos- sibilities, and superlatives. What prompts the child to take his first step out into mental activity? How does he begin to think and speak and remember and express his likes and dislikes? Why does he linger so long in childish weakness and spend so much of his precious life in childish play before beginning intelligent and serious work in this great working world? 14 CHILD- PLAY, OR In possession of all our grown-up greatness, there is danger of losing touch and sympathy with the beginner. The flower is so unlike the ripe fruit ; the method of support is so different for the dependent little bird in the nest from the full-fledged bird in the air ; the child's thought, nine-tenths physical demonstration and his every word either voiced in or associated with muscular action, is equally unlike the abstract meditation of older people. To understand children we must cling close to nature. To facilitate the study, we complete the cluster of natural history and put the child in contrast and com- parison with the young of other animated beings. For convenience, we suppose our little hero was born in the constellation Gemini — The Twins. The signs were in his head, indicating that his career would be distinguished by brain activity. Compared with other living beings his brain is pounds where theirs are ounces. Born in the constellation Gemini, nature made his birth contemporary with young life everywhere abound- ing ; young fish life in the water ; young bird life in the air; young animal life in forest and field; and young insect life everywhere. Differentiating the infant human from other forms of infantile life, the infant human is the feeblest, frailest, and slowest of growth to independent, self-reliant exist- ence of all that heaven has made to breathe and live. The infant child is described in the superlative degree, but all the superlatives are on the negative side — negative at the beginning. SELF - EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 15 In size, how tiny and comic the little nestler — super- latively insignificant and dependent. If quantity of brain is prophetic of his future, he will turn the scale and come out ahead some day. But the delay in infancy and childhood is so long, comparatively so long. Other living beings hurry on to maturity, while human beings spend one-third of their existence in adolescence. The ephemereal insect completes all the experience of life in a day. Born in the morning, at noon it is the parent of a progeny like itself, and in the evening death removes it to make room for another generation equally ephemereal. Human life is of slow growth compared with bird life. At six weeks the bird perfect in feather and song has left the nest ; at six months it has mated and built its own nest and set up housekeeping for itself. The animals with all their ponderous weight and gigantic physical force hurry on to maturity, while the babe still lingers near the cradle. In two days most young animals gain possession of their physical force and learn the use of their limbs to stand and walk and run. At two months they are as fleet of foot and per- fect in sagacity as their parents. At two years they have completed the whole circle of life in size and strength and parentage. But — while birds of equal age are leading an inde- pendent life in the air ; while animals have grown to be kings of the field and forest— the child is still an infant, just learning to take his first tottering step and 16 CHILD -PLAY, OK to speak his first stammering word, just beginning to show signs that he is born an intelligent being ; and when both bird and beast have grown old and departed from the stage of action, the child is beginning to be a man or woman. But how inferior to other forms of animal life in the beginning. How superior in the ending. While the child lies helpless and passive in the cra- dle, even the insect has been endowed with an instinct that makes it from the first independent of a mother's care. But the endowment of the infant is a mind cap- able of improvement by education ; a mind capable of infinite growth and creative thought. As a child he is helpless, passive, plastic, and dependent on the service of others. As a man he is the representative of Diety, the co-worker with God, and has dominion over the beasts of the field and power over nature, and all her wild forces are subdued to his use and made his serv- ants. At his touch the world itself is remoulded and recreated into final and finished form. This is the explanation of delayed infancy. It is education that makes the man, and prolonged infancy and childhood is prolonged opportunity for formative education. The birds and the beasts are children of a wealthy house. Nature, rich and prodigal with her gifts, has supplied all their wants. They are comfortably and often beautifully clothed, yet they toil not, neither do they spin. They are bountifully fed, but they do not sow nor gather into barns. Bird and beast life con- SELF - EDUCATION THROUGH PliAY. 17 sists of a few simple acts directed towards seeking food, avoiding danger and propagating their species; and this they do under the unconscious impulse of an instinct as automatic and void of reason in its opera- tion as the unfolding of the lily or as the running of the brook. Consequently, birds and beasts have nothing to learn ; no thought for to-day or to-morrow ; no problem to solve for improved present or future well-being. They live over again the lives of their ancestors. Heredity does everything for them ; education noth- ing. Spontaneous nature, instinct, organization com- plete at once, supply all their wants. They need no prolonged infancy affording opportunity for prolonged education. Nature acts on, and for beasts and birds and insects, making them what they are. But it is the province of man to take nature under his care and by his creative genius to supply what he finds wanting. He is born to the necessity of having dominion over the beasts of the field, to subdue the earth and create the condition of his own well-being. His high destiny is to be master, and the fields and forests and forces of nature his servants. By the use of chemical and mechanical forces he makes himself next to omnipotent, and is constantly carrying the world and himself forward to higher results and nobler developments. As tiller of the soil, he removes the primeval forests, and gardens and orchards and grain of his own choice take their place. His skill adds to the beauty of the 18 CHILD -PLAY, OR flower and the luster and lusciousness of the fruit. Under his tutilage the wild animals are domesticated and with affectionate fidelity add to his and their com- fort in many ways. The ox and the horse under his guidance cultivate the fields ; the cow and bee make his table to flow with milk and honey. The sheep and the silk worm provide him with clothing. By his skill he has transformed seas into dry land and deserts into water springs. He has not only made the winds, waves and lightnings his servants to convey himself and the products of his creative genius from place to place, but in a measure he has gained command of the clouds and rain. In short, through human genius, the whole course of nature has been turned into different channels, and all that is most beautiful and interesting is the work of man's handicraft. Creative thought has promoted him from the bottom to the top of the scale, and made him the fearless and intelligent sovereign of all the ani- mated creation. And it may be affirmed, without fear of success- ful contradiction, that the prolonged infancy and childhood is the guarantee of all man's power over nature and the foundation of all his progressive- ness. The essential feature of man is the reciprocal improveableness of himself by improving the world he lives in. And the sweet pranks of childhood, doing in play what they see older people do in work, is nature's own training school for this high destiny. Playing in joyous freedom and without purpose, save to gratify their in-born desire of seeing, hearing, and SELF - EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 19 doing, they have tasked every faculty, stimulated a growth of brain and muscle, gained the use of eye, ear, hand, foot, and tongue, gained a knowledge of cause and eflfect preparatory to improving himself and remodeling the world. Let the stoic say if he pleases that he eats to live. Most people, forgetful of the good of living, eat to gratify the appetite. But nature hides her end under the pleasure of the palate, and the food supports life and growth all the same ; even more. Think of the disasterous results of people only eating from consid- erations of duty. In like manner it is the joyous play-school, that so sweetly beguiles away the long years of childhood, and under the disguise of fun and frolic, schools, trains and lays the foundation of human greatness and human destiny. Prolonged training has always preceded great achieve- ments and grand destinies. The name of Moses will ever be great in history, and the civilization he gave the world will last like the sun in the sky, and be a light to all ages. Eighty years was he in being trained for forty years work. Forty year's in the Court of Pharaoh, he was educated in the worldly side of his mission, and forty years alone with God, in the Midian desert, he was being trained in the divine side. From this school he went out to promulgate the greatest divine-human civilization the world had to that date ever seen. One-fourth of the average life is spent in childhood ; one-third in adolescence ; and did human beings hurry 20 CHILD - PLAY, OR on to maturity like brute beings, human life would be of no more significance than brute life. It is time and practice that make perfect. A young artist complained that it was unfair for his master to receive for thirty days work as much as he received for a whole year. To this the trained expert replied, "You mistake, sir ; I worked thirty years that I might be able to do this work in thirty days." Beast, bird, and plant life hurry on to maturity, and each will be a duplicate of its parent, no more, no less. From the egg will be known to a certainty what the feather and song of the bird will be. From the seed it can be foretold what the leaf and fruit of the plant will be. But the child is passive, plastic, mouldable, and will be what education makes him. He can be taught to speak any language, worship at any altar, conform to any civilization or labor at any craft ; and a large por- tion of the education which equips him for life's work is involuntary, unsought, and unconsciously obtained in the play-school. But it is none the less the activity of the child which culminates in the achievements of the man. The eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains is so gradual that the traveler is half-way to the summit before he is conscious of any unusual elevation. In like manner, the child is half-way up the hill of science before he realizes that there is such a hill. All his play was so spontaneous and full of present gratifi- cation, so much like doing for the sake of doing, that the youngster never dreamed of being at school, till the lessons of life were half learned. Playing amidst SELF- KDUCATION THROUiill ]»LAV. 21 trees and plants, he became a botanist, and learned the names of plants and fruits; playing with animals, he took his first lesson in zoology, and learned the name of beast and birds, and became familiar with their habits. His rambles among rocks and rills gave him many lessons in geology. He had also learned some- thing of language in this play-school; something of history, mathematics, optics, and acoustics, more than he will ever learn again in the same number of years. Playing planting and building, he had gotten a start as farmer and carpenter; at church and in society he had learned the first principles of religion and morality. And all this was achieved so spontaneously, so joyfully, and so healthfully, that not a thought of responsibility or a fear of being unable to pass at the final examina- tion had ever entered the mind of the little busy body. Here is one quarterly report written and read in the life of the child. Each day he worked until he was weary only to sleep and renew his efibrts with increased skill on the morrow. Not one day had been lost. Not one hour misspent. The grade is a good one. It is read in increased appetite, healthy blood and rosy cheeks. The advancement is delightful ; it is reported in strong and sturdy limbs, genial temper, increasing wis- dom and stature. The promotion is sure ; from happy infancy, through healthful childhood to vigorous manhood. God bless the play-school. CHAPTKR II. Play, the Natural Occupation of Children. " Coming as students of moral powers to the study of childhood, what wonderful facts open up before us? Steam was as mighty as now before James Watt heard in his mother's tea-kettle the puff of coming engines and the rattle of coming machinery; but it was an undiscovered, unused power, wasting its giant strength in the air. The unemployed steam power of the moral world is childhood, its restless activity, its puerile sports, its words and sympathies."— W. F. Craft. fpIFE is activity. Inactivity is death. In every form of animated existence, the health and growth of the body is conditioned on a full and free activity peculiar to the habits and character of the individual. Neither insect, nor beast, nor bird can escape this law ; and play is the spontaneous and invol- untary exercise that the physical well-being of all young life needs. It is the indispensable necessity of all young life ; consequently the young of all living beings play. Young fish play. As soon as escaped from the spawn they begin a series of instinctive activity for activity's sake, playing and applying their powers of locomotion. Young birds play. When their conditions of com- fort have been met, the parent goes out into quiet repose. Then the brood commence a career of bird antics, running, picking and flopping their wings in vaulting flights. There is no other name for this spon- (23) 24 CHILD -PLAY, OR taneous and preliminary practice of the members of the body but bird's play. Animals play; colts, calves, pigs, puppies, kittens. The puppy or kitten is often seen whirling itself dizzy, toying with its own tail, when no better sport can be had. Wild animals, the lion, tiger, bear, wolf, fox, are no less playful than the domestic animals. Insects play ; the bee, the fly, the gnat, are often seen collected in sunny places performing their sportive gyrations as if waltzing to the music of their own wings. Apply the microscope to a drop of stagnant water, and it reveals a group of darting, whirling, cir- culating animalculae, suggestive of all kinds of games played at once. Every healthful child is a playful child. As soon as he can coo and kick and thump, he begins a series of physical demonstrations. As the mind unfolds, and he gets fuller possession of his powers, the play grows more diversified with his growth until of all that romps and sports the child is the most playful. The history of childhood has but one chapter, and that chapter is play. In all times and in all lands play is the natural and necessary occupation of childhood. Dr. Kane observed the Esquimaux children playing ball on the frost and snow-covered fields of the Arctic North. Travelers in China describe the crowded population of adults as apathetic, inert and lacking in vivacity. But the little Chinese boys and girls are everywhere going through their antics. They are eagerly investi- SELF- EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 25 gating every place and everything, and playing make- believe imitations of the ways and pursuits of older people. Antiquarians have given a detailed account of the juvenile sports of the Greek and Roman children. In these far-oflf times and lands as now, when a group of children were released from in-door restraint with or without putting their hands on the yard fence they would leap the wall in preference to going through the gate. On the play grounds, during all these historic ages, it has been an exhibition over and over again of the games so familiar to our times. Mahaflfy says, " We can have a very distinct idea of the sort of amusement popular among Greek children." And enumerates hopping on one foot, somersaults, throwing stones at marks, peg splitting, games at ball, played very much as to-day, hide-and-seek, blind-man's- buff, rythmatic songs, and playing all-around-the-ring, marbles, and spinning tops. The Greek children did not have heads and points, but they had its equivalent. By throwing up a shell painted black on one side and bright on the other they played " Sun and Rain." A large beetle found in the Grecian Islands afforded an excellent substitute for a kite. Tying a string and sometimes a lighted taper to this large-winged insect, it was fine sport to guide its course while flying — we mean fine sport for the boys. We cannot think of children without thinking of them being engaged in play. If we think of them in that unknown antiquity from which our antiquity copied and borrowed, we think, of them as playing children. 26 CHILD -ri.AY, OR If we think of them in some future age, when the im- perfect pursuits and amusements of the past shall have all disappeared to make room for a perfect future we still think of them as playing children. In all ages, the Iron Age, the Silver Age, and the Golden Age, the idea of children and play are inseparable. The Bible prophet describes the coming millennium, "And the streets shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets ; " and very old men and women seated in the doors happy as on-lookers. This juvenile sport that has engaged the attention of so many millions of chil- dren as wide and as enduring as the human race, cer- tainly has a meaning as deep as the human soul. In the light of these facts, remembering that an All-wise Creator made the world, we are forced to the conclusion that play is the child's necessity and meets a deep- seated want of human nature. To many children the play period has been made a bitter-sweet, more bitter and less sweet because play's place in nature has not been understood. The sportive activity of neglected children has been permitted to grow wild, and then cruelly suppressed. The rod com- ing down in the midst of their romp and riot, sweet play and bitter tears were strangely commingled. But in this case prohibition failed to prohibit. A plucky little fellow, six years old, full of pent-up tears, gave vent to an occasional sob. Being asked why he sobbed, he said, "A feller sobs when he don't want to cry, and it bursts out.'' Children's thoughts, emotions, and actions all exist in fusion, and if denied expression in one form, will voice themselves in SKI.F - EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 27 another. The sorrow that is denied expression in cry- ing, voices itself in sighs and sobs. Nature has filled children full to overflowing with play. This play is the natural expression of the emotion, thought and energy of the child and will find vent in some form ; in spite of coercion and prohibition, it will burst! out afresh ; and if the effort to restrain is unwise and unreason- able, this playful propensity will often assert itself in some grotesque way. The antics of a breezy little fellow had exhausted the patience of his nervous mother, and she com- manded, "James, stop that noise, and sit down quietly for the next hour or I will punish you." " Mother," said he, " I cannot keep still. I'd burst open, I know I would, if I could not run and laugh and get the noise out of me." A sweet, elfin little girl, trying hard to keep quiet during a long and loud sermon, whispered, " Ma, I wish I were a preacher, so that I could jump and hollow on Sunday." Those busy little idlers have been fearfully misunder- stood. The playing child is the true child. Play is the child's natural activity of the body and mind. It is the essential beginning of life's active work. It is indispensable to the healthy development of every faculty of the mind and body. Children should be helped to play, not hindered. They should be assisted and guided in this natural activity and provided with play-things fitted to make play an education, a develop- ment, but never repressed. Everywhere about us child- hood has been stifled and crushed ; not from any desire 28 CHILD -PLAY, OK to do SO, but from ignorance of the true significance of of play. And more. The injury suffered by the child has brought ruin and disaster to after-life when prop- erly guided play would have grown into habits of industry, order, regularity and morality. The study of man is man ; but to complete the study it should begin at the beginning. This first chapter in the life of the human being has been strangely neg- lected. It seems to have been taken for granted that there is nothing in child life worthy of study. Strange to relate, we have no science of childhood, no infantile psychology. The geologist in passing a clifi" of rocks observes critically every fossilized plant or shell and tries to dis- cover the process by which it started into being. The botanist with science in mind and glass in hand studies the germinating seed and formulates into scientific language, the process by which the seed begins to be a tree. The entomologist traces the life of the insect through all the diSerent stages of development, from the egg to the winged and painted butterfly or beetle. But who with equal care has studied the words and ways of every group of children, seen by fireside and wayside, in search of the secret spring which sets going the infantile mind and tongue? Children, too, are scientific specimens. To know the human mind in its matured operations, we must study the beginning of mental activity. How does the mind get started? How does the child begin to think, remember, speak, reason, and express his likes and dis- SELF - EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 29 likes? The libraries of the world are flooded with books pertaining to mental science; but all these psychologies are for the adult mind in active operation. We have no science of the infantile mind. Outside the kindergarten circle, the early playful activity of children has received little serious attention. When the old philosophers encountered a thing, the use of which they did not understand, they explained its existence on the general principle " Nature abhors a vacuum." Every space and place must be filled with something. And things that had no other use justified their existence because they were good filling for those vacant places in nature. The lack of appreciation of 1 childish play would indicate that childhood is one of \ those abhorred vacuums in nature which must be filled with something, and that something, is play. Random play. Busy idleness. Childish pastime. Childish waste-time, lost-time. And like those interspaces in nature before the days of science, every one was at liberty to fill out this waste-time in human life as interest or inclination suggested. As we learn from the records of no distant past, at one time earth was thought to be an extended plain, and the sun rose and set from the great unknown. The West, all ablaze with the last lingering rays of the sua, touched the heart and enkindled the fancy of every observer ; and each one had his own conception of this brilliant display. One with poetic taste pictured the twilight sky as the garden of Hesperides. The even- ing stars and sun-lit clouds were golden apples. The darkness was a great dragon which guarded them. 30 CHILD -PLAY, OR The innocent child that sees everything and calls everything by some beautiful name, said *' It was the sun going to sleep, and he covered himself with a beautiful bed-kilt." The monk, mistaking asceticism for piety and dis- trusting everything which afforded beauty or pleasure, saw in this same radiant evening sky the reflection of the lurid flames of hell, and shuddered, prayed, and crossed himself at the sight. Childish play, with its endless antics, entertaining games and joyful interest in small things, like the setting sun, has attracted the attention of every one. But to most people this free, abounding, joyful play is a beautiful, unexplained phenomenon. Interviewing many fathers, mothers, and teachers with these and like questions : Why do children play ? What relation has play to the child's after life? Does play have any effect on the present or ftitiire mental or moral condition of the child? Some answered : " It is a subject that I never thought of and have no answer to give." One thought the ceaseless activity of young life a cheap and innocent amusement, and said, " Let the little silly things have a good time while they can. Ignorance is bliss." A fat, benevolent old lady thought, " It seemed good in the Creator to make children so happy with play while they were growing big enough to be good for something." SELF - EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 31 A churchman with severe theology, thought those busy hands, feet and tongues all set going by blind impulse, rather than by reason, was clear proof of orig- inal sin, and children must be curbed and kept down with rigid restraint, till they were old enough to be regenerated and begin life aright. Others of business habits and methodical education thought children's play a random doing and undoing, a waste of time, and the sooner that old heads were put on young shoulders the better. Not a few with economical ideas, who esteemed bread winning and money making the chief end of both man and child, could see nothing in play but busy idleness. Some thought there was no worthy explanation or apology, especially for that boy. At home it was rip, tear, slam, bang, jumble, tumble. His malignant mis- chief and screeching noise made him the terror of the neighborhood. At school his idea of improvement was to throw a paper ball straight to the mark without observation ; to turn a somersault without putting his head on the ground ; to stand on his head without put- ting his foot against a tree and to whip the teacher. As to being a man, his ideal was almost realized. He could smoke a half of a cigar and use profane language. Everybody says, " He will amount to nothing in this or any other world." Why? The world itself was at first a chaotic world. Out of this jumbled-up mass of indistinguishable darkness and disorder rose a beau- tiful and habitable world, completely green ; a Garden of Eden. 82 CHILD -PI.AY, OR "Only a boy, with his noise and fun, The veriest mystery under the sun ; As brimful of mischief, wit and glee, As ever a human frame can be, And as hard to manage as — what — ah, me, 'Tis hard to tell." "Only a boy, who may be a man, If nature goes on with her first plan ; If intemperance or some fatal snare, Conspire not to rob us of this our heir ; Our blessing, our trouble, our rest, our care ; Our torment, our joy ; Only a boy." That boy. He cannot be driven. He cannot be reg- ulated by coercion or reconstruction. The Roman inquisition commanded Galileo to stop the revolving earth from spinning through space around the sun. The persecuted astronomer only had courage to whisper " But it does move." And it does move, and the spring and summer attending each annual revolution will make field and forest burst forth with life of some kind, either wild weed or wild wood; the golden grain, the pear, the peach, the rose, the lily. The way to keep down the weed and briar, is to plant and cultivate the growth that is good for food and pleasing to the eye. Captain January said " Three things are necessary to raise a child, the help of God, a cow, and common sense." Common sense forces us to the conclusion that this irrepressable desire to romp SELF- KDUOATION THROUGH PLAV. 33 and play has some deep meaning and supplies some great natural want, and it is so necessary for the sym- metrical development of juvenile life that there can be no substitute for it. There is no compensation or diversion that will lead young life to forget it. It is an in-born, spontaneous exercise that children need as much as they need light, air and food. Play is instinc- tively craved by the child as a necessity and a God- given want of the young life. An only child, a little boy not accustomed to much company, went visiting with his mother where there was plenty of companionship of his own age. The starved little fellow found the romp, frolic and tumble over the grassy lawn so exhilarating and life-giving that his last retiring words each night were " Ma, be sure and wake me early to-morrow morning, I want to play all day as long as I stay." A little seven-year old son of wealthy parents, was dressed, petted and restrained from the go-as-you-please amusements so dear to children. Pale and feeble as he was, he felt his privations keenly. He wanted to be able to run, climb and wade brooks like other children ; and he seemed to realize that his dress which, too dainty to touch the earth, too pretty to be ruflfled and spoiled, was in some way responsible for his puny con- dition. One day he said to a sympathizing friend " I do wish pa would get so poor that he wouldn't be able to buy me shoes. Then I could go bare-footed like other children." The child's sport and play needs guidance and stim- ulus, but repression or restraint cannot fail to be detri- 34 CHILD - PLAY mental. No power can hinder these little ones from being what they are. They are a perpetual motion and can only be stilled by death. Help them to places where they can act with understanding. By education, convert their play into the means of physical, mental, and moral culture. CHAPTER III. Childhood's Play the Germ of Manhood's Ways and Works. " The power that has scarcely germinated iu the boy's mind is seen by him in the legend or tale, a perfect plant, filled with the most delicious blossoms and fruit. The very remoteness of the conception fitting into his own vague hopes expands the heart and soul, strengthens the mind and unfolds in freedom and power."— Froebel. ^^N old Iranian legend tells of a spring of unusual Jj^ promise in the far oflf land of Persia. That spring the earth rose completely green. Vernal bloom and beauty adorned the field and forest, and all nature was a garden of delight. The orchards were arrayed in surpassing loveliness, and grapes, apricots and peaches gave signs of an overflowing crop. The rose bushes, grown to the size of trees, never blossomed more luxuriantly. Everywhere the green, the pink, the white and crimson seemed to rival each other in deli- cacy of tint and hue. The air was laden with sweetest perfume and the melody of bees, birds, winds and waters filled the air ; never was there a promise of so great a harvest. When autumn had come and crowned the year with inexhaustible abundance, men and beasts would feel themselves immortal ; envy, disease and death would cease from the earth. (35) 36 CHILD - PLAY, OR The grateful people, anticipating the time when buds and bloom would grow and ripen into delicious fruit, plucked the flowers of spring as the holiest offering they could place on the altars of Ahura Mazda, the wise- minded God. Young men and young women wove bouquets of flowers plucked from tree and vine and gave to those dearest to them as the truest and purest token of affection. But this surpassing loveliness was only temporary. The promise of inexhaustible abundance was never realized. Anra Mainyus, the evil-minded one, full of death and opposition, fell from the sky in the form of a great serpent with six heads, six forked tongues and six death-bearing stings. This Dragon's breath poisoned all nature. The air became cold, cold as to the trees, cold as to the earth. A death-bearing frost fell upon the valleys and much outspreading snow covered the mountains. Before the vehement, deadly frost arose, in the low lands there were billowy waves of bloom and surpassing loveliness ; after it there were blackened stems and withering leaves. Before the frost arose on the mountain there was much pasture ; after it melting snows. This spring of promise was followed by an autumn of famine. Hunger created discontent and malice. The little children grew lean, dark-complexioned and died of want. The men grew vicious and went to war, some killing and robbing others, that they might escape death themselves. What this legend meant to the ancient fire worship- ers, never mind ; to us it is a parable pointing to our story. SELF - KDUCATION THKOlKiH PLAY. 37 The influence affecting the character and destiny of man begins in the nursery. From bud to maturity both plant and human life, blossom out according to fixed laws. God has made child-life a spring time of bloom and beauty, of play and joy. Play is to the career of after life what the bloom of spring is to the ripe fruit of summer. Injure the bloom and the fruit will suffer injury both in quantity and quality. Kill the bloom of spring and the autumnal fields will be barren ; unwisely repress or restrain the play of the child and the result will be a starved, crippled, agonized man or woman. / Kill the play of the child and it will probably kill all that is worth living for in adult life. This play period that has been set aside as the unproductive period in human life is in reality the most fundamental, important and productive. Play, the natural occupation of children, is the natural and necessary beginning of active life. As the fruit is in the bud, as the oak is in the acorn, so the man is m the child, and the end of man's career is in the beginning of the child's activity. Play is the bud and bloom of human life and grows into all the diversified conditions, pursuits and attainments of which human beings are capable. Play is a natural and nec- essary activity. But it is more than this, it is a self- directing activity. It is an in-born impulse that leads to the development of character and the industrial pur- suits upon which human life and comfort depend. In fact all life is self-guided and acts in the direction of its own complete development and well-being. Growing plants reach sykward for the vitalizing effect of the sun beam; the young birds beat the air with unfledged 38 CHILD - PLAY, OR wings, at once a prophecy and preparation for its aerial flight ; the amphibious animals — the duck, the turtle, the seal, born on land, instinctively direct their earliest effort toward the water. Man was made to be master of the world, and the world acknowledges his dominion and responds to his touch. He commands, and the fields yield him their harvest. He puts his hand on the wood, the stone and the clay and transforms them into walls and roofs which shelter him from the storm. He applies his mind to the study of nature, and the elements yield to his will and reveal to him the truths of science. He is born master, and the world is created his servant. This mastership of the world is ingrained in human nature and stamped on man's vital energy and expressed in his every act from the cradle to the grave. Born to the necessity of self-improvement and the transformation of the world, children instinctively begin their active career by playing, handling, produc- ing and transforming. Young animals are frolicsome things, but they play merely for physical growth and for developing their peculiar modes of life. Animal activity never employs the use of tools; consequently the playful beasts of the field need no playthings. The child born to creative industry, his first deeds are an indication of what the human career will be, and point out the direction human enterprise will take. The child begins his activity by producing and creating, and while yet in the cradle he wants toys to stimulate and set going his inventive and creative instinct. Finished, artistic toys have no special attraction for the child. Some chance-found article that he can break or pick to SELF - EDUCATION THROUGH PLAV. 3i» pieces in the exercise of his investigative disposition — sticks, clay, sand, things which can be constructed into a thousand different forms, are the playthings which please the child's fancy ; anything on which he can ex- ercise his creative genius by breaking or making it in some new form. A little fellow incidentally hearing the remark, " A horse is not much use till he is broke," thought to im- prove his hobby-horse by breaking the rockers off. A kind-hearted little girl wanted a rag to tie up her papa's wounded feelings. These efforts at constructive- ness are crude ; but the trained observer can see in them the incipient horse-trainer and hospital nurse. Labor is activity kept under strict control for the accomplishment of definite results. Of the one thou- sand and five hundred persons operating a Connecticut pin factory, some are assigned the task of digging copper from the Lake Superior mines ; others are em- ployed to smelt the ore and ship the metal to head- quarters. Alloying the copper with one-third zinc and converting it into brass is the assigned duty of another class ; another set of workmen are operating machines which roll and draw the metal into wire ; again others are running cunning little machines, which, by one process, heads, points, polishes and finishes the pin ; others supply the pins and paper to a handy contrivance which musters them like bayoneted soldiers into rank and file, companies and platoons, ready to charge upon the ladies' toilet, where forty tons of pins fall each week in the battle of life and fashion. 40 CHILD -PLAY, OR Of these fifteen hundred workmen, each man, woman and child had his or her appointed work, knew and kept the appointed place, had a prescribed task, labored to accomplish definite results, was kept under watchful control and held to the strictest accountability. But that group of fickle children are for a minute all ab- sorbed in a game of heads and points. The next minute a thoughtless little fellow, seeking fun without counting the cost, puts a pin in the other boy's chair, heads down and points up. Then comes a settlement ; and in five minutes they are all friends again, and the winner trades the whole stock of pins for two nails, three buttons, a shoe string and a marble the other boy had in his pocket. In all this there was no account kept of the business, no thought of profit or loss and no concern about their conduct. Play is the spontaneous beginning of activity, and has no conscious end or aim. It keeps itself free from premeditated control, creates or destroys, makes or breaks, continues or desists in obedience to blind im- pulse. Play is a law to itself. It prescribes for itself. It is its own end and aim. It produces whatever fancy dictates, and never becomes a task. They don't have to ; they play because they want to. It is a doing for the sake of doing ; a joyful expression of exuberant, fresh young life. An unbounded, instinctive activity ; an exhibition of spontaneous energy. A hoop, a top, a stick, a stone, pins with heads or points, anything and everything becomes an object of interest to the child and calls into activity his whole being. Play is the nat- ural activity of the child, and anything may be con- verted into a plaything. SELF- EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 41 But this aimless play is paradoxical ; without end or aim in view, it has the most wise and worthy end, and play is absolutely necessary to that end. The sportive, restless child is prompted to activity by a blind impulse but nature with open eyes and a predetermined purpose is leading this playful fun and frolic to the most benefi- cent and far-reaching results. Play has a grand meaning. It is the bud and bloom of young life, and unfolds into all the diversified indus- tries and interests of mankind. The happiness of the child is in the play. Deny the child the free exercise of his inalienable right to play, and you will not only blight the enjoyment of childhood, but the disastrous result would afiect all the coming years of his life. What if our children would practice the everlasting gospel of "don't," which some par- ents are constantly ding-donging into their ears, and the demure little folks would sit silently or walk about quietly and thoughtfully, waiting to grow big enough, old enough and wise enough to be good for something ? Could a fond mother point with pride to her boy and say, "John doesn't fidget or wriggle, he doesn't wrestle or scufile with other boys and tear his clothes, he doesn't wade into the water or roll in the dust and soil them, he doesn't forget what I tell him and run away from home without leave, he doesn't dis- obey my commands and tease the cat or tie kettles to the dog's tail, he doesn't worry the lambs and calves by working them to his sled, he doesn't forget my orders and climb trees, he doesn't tease me for a gun or horn or contradict my word, he doesn't care much for toys of 42 CHILD -PLAY, OR any kind. The other boys call him a stupid little ninny or nickname him * Johnny Don't ;' but he is so correct and obedient." Would John be the most interesting, pleasing and promising type of childhood ? Would such waiting and wishing to be wise in childhood be regarded as an omen of unusual wisdom in mannood ? A most solemn looking mule when out of the traces was no sooner in harness than he perseveringly culti- vated the habit of kicking the end-gate out of the wagon. It was a very frisky colt which grew into " Tom," the dear, trusty old family horse. The best boys get the fidgets, grow riotous, tear their clothes and break things. But the mishaps and accidents are not the only things which grow out of this impulsive play. The health and symmetrical growth of the boy is in the play. Deprive the child of his play and you will injure his health and stunt his growth. The body grows by its own activity. The mental development of the child is in the play. Deprive the child of the advantages of play and you will dwarf and cripple his mental growth. The mind grows by its own activity. The character of the child is in the play. Amiable and innocent play will produce a refined and happy dis- position ; rude and rough play will grow into rude and vicious manners and habits. The child's habits and character grow — grow in the direction in which they are exercised. The social, moral and religious life of the child is in the play. Virtue kindles at the touch of happiness. Restrain and repress the free enjoyment of social play SELF - EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 43 and you will produce a cold, unsocial, melancholy, and perhaps a cruel disposition. The pleasing manners, genial temper and courtesies of life are in the play. Make children unhappy by aus- tere and unreasonable restraints and the ^foundation is laid for a peevish, suspicious and unobliging disposition. Later in life they will give back to the world the same intolerance their parents gave to them. The artistic skill and mechanical genius of the child is in the play. There is nothing that delights children more than playing at drawing, building and contriving. The breaking period naturally grows into the making period. What children play at when young is more easily and skillfully practiced when they are older. The playful propensities promote the growth and develop- ment of the senses and bodily organs and add skill and dexterity to the fingers. The child through his own activity is trained in the easiest and most delightful way to be master of his powers. The play of the child grows into the craft of the man. The imagination and ideality of the child is in the play. The child's devotion to rude and outlandish toys has been a surprise to us all. Older people look with disgust on the stupid little thing's want of taste and dis- crimination. We have seen a bright, breezy little girl pouring out all the affections of her pure, sweet soul upon a dirty, banged, battered and hairless doll with raveled mouth, broken nose, the stuffing leaking out of one leg and the other off at the knee. And yet in the estimation of the child a halo of glory encircled that 44 CHILD -PLA.Y, OR ragged and detestable fragment of what, in its best days, had only been a horrid darkey doll. She would not have exchanged it for a new, artistic, talking, crying and sleeping doll, and taken the world to boot. Another was giving all the wealth of her afifection to a forked radish, with a tuft of leaves suggestive of a head of hair and a rag wrapped around it. Grown-up folks have stood aghast at the misplaced affection of the little idiot. But is it certain we have correctly interpreted the child ? With a more critical knowledge of the way " the young idea shoots," it yet may he discovered that it was the grown-up folks who were the mistaken. The child does not want something complex to study, some production of genius to admire. He prefers some rude, imperfect contrivance to the more artistic and exact resemblance. This strange preference for the unartistic is all ex- plained when we come to understand what toys signify to the child. He does not depend upon brilliance of color, exquisite proportions and fine finish as conditions of admiration. He is not pouring out the infantile fountains of affections and admiration on that crude toy. But it is his own ideal which he sees ; and that toy is to him the rod in the hands of Moses which breaks up the fountain of memory, imagination and ideality. A stool turned over is in imagination a boat in which the boy navigates imaginary seas and rivers. The stool set up on its legs immediately becomes an imaginary horse, and mounting it, away he gallows to a neighbor's house or to New York City. Where he rides all depends SEIiF - EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 45 on the child's fancy, for the road, the distance and the fare is all the same, whether his destination happens to be the nearest neighbor or some remote city. A band- box or a chair turned over, with the aid of imagination, will answer for the neighbor's house or just as well for New York or Boston. While he rides his hobby in imagination, he feels himself mounted on a real, large horse. When the little girl caresses the doll, in imag- ination, she sees and feels herself embracing some real living object of aflfection. We have wondered and looked down on the stupid little folks because we were too stupid ourselves to understand the amazing myster- ies of the budding mind. The child has a divinely creative mind and soul, stirring his inner life. It is what the child ought to be, and will be which is beating beneath what he is now. He is the true poet, acting his own creations. He is a day dreamer, dramatizing his own dreams. Playthings are the trellis and play is the germinating mind, climb- ing up the trellis to bud and bloom. The child is a little romancer, and toys when draped with his own imagination are characters figuring in his romance. The literalist may see the real presence in the bread and wine, but to the child they are symbols, suggestions on which he hangs his imagination. If it is doubted whether he sees beyond the real into the realms of fancy, ask him his explanation of the phenomena of nature, and the little allegorizer at once sets himself to describe inanimate things in words, customs, emotions and passions borrowed from his own inner life. Such are the verbatim answers of children when asked 46 CHILD - PLAY, OB their ideas of the course of nature. The setting "sun has gone to bed, and in the morning when he gets up he will want bread and butter and a cup of tea." It is evident that the child was imputing his own experience to the sun. " It is naughty fire " because it burns some- body; "Poor wood" because it was consumed in the fire. When the stars were veiled by clouds " God took them up into heaven;" "The moon is following us about because papa forgot to bring his lamp," and when it suddenly shone out from behind a cloud, it is " God lighting the gas." In all these examples the child sees not the real thing but its own ideality. Toys in like manner enkindle the imagination, awaken memory and aid the fancy, and the more remote resemblance is preferred to the more accurate and artistic likeness, because it gives more freedom to fancy and a broader range to imagination. What the child wants is not the exact likeness, but they think by sym- bols, such as outlines and hints afiford. If you would understand the germinating mind, study it in the light of the budding and blooming plant rather than in the light of the artificial methods and habits of older people. The fruit is in the bud. Miss Blow hit the mark when she said, " The play world has its trades and professions, its varied round of work and its circles of pleasures. Here a miniature Barnum exhibits his menagerie of wild beasts ; yonder is a theater where, on the stage, a coquettish Cinderella tries on her diminutive slipper, or a sleeping beauty is awakened by a fairy prince. Now we come to a church where a six-year old Spurgeon thunders wrath against evil-doers ; then we enter a hos- SELF - EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 47 pital where child doctors are examining the pulse and taking the temperature of their dolls with button hooks, while little white-capped nurses watch by their bedside and administer medicine or nourishment with great solicitude." The play business world also has fields and farms where six-year old farmers plant seeds and gather harvests. It also has its State Department, where six-year old senators and congressmen plan polit- ical campaigns, and where puerile generals fight bloody battles and bring about great revolutions. All the diversified industrial world of grown up people is bud- ding and blooming in the child's play world. It is a fact, and whether it is the child taking the world into his own life and understanding, or the world being born anew from each child heart, it matters not. One thing is certain, the child's play world is so related to the business world of men and women, that the great working world of fashion, trade, farms and factories, churches and schools could never be reached by any other road than the one leading through the play world. The first revelation the child gets of his own powers and ability to contrive and produce is through play. In these play pursuits he first learns what he can do, what he can do easily and what skill can be gained by perseverance and repeated effort ; he learns the nature and quality of material, the magic of inventing and contriving. No; the puerile play is not the touch of the pendulum which swings back and forth just because something touched it and set it going. Nor is it merely the child's own distinctive element in which he lives, moves and has his being, but it is the infantile mind 48 CHILD - PLAY pluming its wings for flying to the heights of matured affection and industry. The child is always outgrowing his playthings, ex- hausting their possibility to afford him amusement. The hobby horse, the doll and the pewter soldier are abandoned and the brush and box of paint, the harp or horn, the kite, the top, the bat and ball take their place. Something is wanted which demands more thought, something into which he can put more of his skill and creative genius. Play is the bloom of spring, and the world of adults is the ripe fruit of summer. First, the tender blade, then the green and forming ear, then the full corn in the ear. The Bible closes with a beautiful parable : It is life figured as a tree bearing twelve manner of fruit. Oriental fancy has enlarged this figure and painted it in more gorgeous colors. The outspreading branching tree of life buds, blooms and bears fruit of every kind needed to supply human want, to please human fancy or gratify human ambition. From its bending branches may be gathered bread, clothing, jewelry, houses, furni- ture, carpets, chariots, horses, books, everything of which human fancy can conceive. It will not desecrate this figure to suggest the child's play is the bloom that ripens into the diversified fruit of this wonderful tree. CHAPTKR IV. Rude Play the Result of Incomplete Brain Develop- ment. The Child will Outgrow it. " There comes the boys ! Oh dear, the noise, The whole house feels the racket — Behold the knee of Harry's pants And weep o'er Bertie's jacket ! Now what to do with these wild boys And all their din and clatter, Is really quite a grave affair, No laughing, trifling matter." — Selected. "The young resemble the remote ancestry, the adult the im- mediate ancestry." /IVNE bright July morning, when the grass was green- ^^ est and the flowers sweetest, a gaily dressed but- terfly was seen flying lazily about. Her velvety wings were painted with a combination of black and red and decorated with bands and dots of yellow and green and gold ; a specimen of nature's coloring in beauty of ar- rangement and delicacy of touch, exceeding the finest specimen of human art. This pretty winged nymph hovering over the blooming plants paused for a moment at one and another to sip the nectar from the delicate little cup at the base of each flower. Finally meeting a companion, the two mounted high into the air with a 49 50 CHILD -PLAY, OR motion half flying and half floating on the breeze ; higher and higher they went, till fields and flowers and even trees were seen far beneath. There the disconso- late butterfly confided the story of her sorrow to her companion. It was this : In love with life and in admiration of her beauty, she indulged the fond hope of being the mother of a family of children — winged, painted and beautiful like herself. With the greatest of care she had selected their birth- place in a locality where they would enjoy every advan- tage. Underneath the leaf of the sweet-scented phlox she had built a silk-lined nest and deposited her eggs. The young butterflies awaking to life in this favored spot, their opening eyes would be greeted with scenes of inspiring beauty. The nectar which filled each dainty flower cup would supply food sweet to their taste and nourishing to life and growth. But alas, she was a disappointed and broken-hearted mother ! Her children were such imperfect, little creeping things. They had no painted wings — in fact they had no wings at all. They were only little, wriggling worms ; and that was not the worst of it. They were low and vicious in their appetites and manners. In- stead of aspiring upward to feed on the bright bloom of the sweet-scented phlox, they crawled downward and burrowed in the earth by day ; at night, when good children ought to be asleep, they would go out and eat greedily of the coarsest food. Neglecting the flowers, they devoured great quantities of weeds and grass and even the gardener's vegetables. In fact, the whole race of mankind was arrayed against them on account of SELF - EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 51 their destructive propensity, and had given them the ugly nick-name of " cut-worms." But the other but- terfly, with worn and faded wings, seemingly much older, and certainly much wiser, said, " You stupid mother ! Don't you know you can't put old butterflies' wings on young caterpillars' shoulders." This silly young insect had forgotten the story of her own life. The ugly cat- erpillar requires time and growth to become winged and painted. In like manner children are rude in conduct because of their imperfect brain development. Mental, moral and social maturity ought not to be expected in ad- vance of physical maturity. The sins and follies pecul- iar to childhood find their explanation in unfinished bodily growth. The child must first wait for develop- ment of limbs, and then learn to walk by walking. He must wait for development of vocal organs, and then learn to talk by talking. He must wait for development of bone and muscle, and then learn to work by work- ing. He must wait for development of brain, and then learn to be intelligent, aflfectionate, truthful and refined by practicing these virtues. His total depravity consists in being born a small boy. His hands and feet are small, his brain is small, and smallest in the region of the intellectual faculties where he will one day be largest. The big side of the infant's brain is back of the ears. His knowledge and experience are small. Discretion in the chrysalis state is better called indiscretion. In short, he is in the chaotic state, without form and void. Getting his growth with the accompanying training will finish the 52 CHILD - PLAY, OR work of creation, and make an orderly man of him, if some daring deed does not finish him first. But what there is of this unfinished specimen of humanity belongs to an earlier age. THE CHILD IS BORN A PREHISTORIC MAN. And in getting to be a modern man he has to pass through all the stages of development and civilization the human race has passed through. He begins to live and act in a paradise of innocent ignorance. Through his appetite for forbidden fruit and other forbidden things, he falls into a state of sin and mischief, and for a brief period leads the life of a genuine barbarian, wholly obedient to his impulses. Says Mr. Louis Robinson: "All young creatures tend to resemble the earlier types from which the race sprung more than the adults do." The game freaks of the small boy tell the story of some far away, wild ancestor ; but as he grows older he grows more con- formed to the morals and manners of later date. This is the universal law of life operating with all the cer- tainty of cause and eflfect. Every plant, insect and animal in infancy and age obey this law of evolution ; first living the life of some remote ancestor and then living their own life down to date. The cultivated apple was produced from the wild apple, but the advantages of culture do not appear in the young fruit. The bud is still bitter. In its growth it is first the crab, then the Pippin or the Bellflower. It is only as the apple approaches maturity that it rap- idly increases in size, takes on the scarlet and golden colors without, and the sweet juices and delicious meat SELF -EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 53 within. Culture does not change the old foundation, it only builds a better life on it. The same holds with our domestic grass and grain. They were originally wild grass and wild grain improved in quality and quan- tity by human culture. But the result of culture does not appear in the tender blade. The great Teacher illustrated this in one of his parables. Tares were sup- posed to be growing in a certain wheat field, and one proposing to weed out these tares was answered, " Not now." At this early stage of growth wheat and tares both look alike. Being unable to distinguish between them, you would root up the wheat also. The harvest alone can reveal which is wheat and which is tares. The natural habits of each young animal and the manners of each young child, will in like manner tell the story of some far-away ancestor. The early playful activity of our domestic animals afibrd a striking illustration of the fact that every domestic animal is born a wild animal and has to be domesticated afresh. Our domestic animals were originally wild animals, tamed and subdued to the use of man. Under his fos- tering care they experienced great change in appear- ance and disposition. The wild mountain goat has been domesticated into the sheep, and its once coarse coat transformed into the fine-fibered fleece. Domesti- cation converted the wolf into the faithful house-dog. The wild ox and wild horse were tamed and taught to assist man in the labor of the field and on the journey. Under the influence of domestication, the wild fowls have given up their wild ways to accommodate them- selves to the new condition of the poultry-yard. 54 CHILD - PLAY, OR The war-like animals, which in a state of nature spent their whole time in seeking food, in attack and defense, have under the hand of man been tamed and taught to serve their master with great affection and fidelity. But their individuality has not been changed. Being more protected and trained to milder habits, they show and even inherit a milder disposition. But the wild nature is still there ; and with a little provo- cation is ever ready to show itself, especially in the young. Nothing seems more innocent and affectionate than the petted house cat; nothing more fierce and vicious than her kitten grown up in some secluded spot unaccustomed to the sight of man. The venomous little creature can spit and strike and scratch equal to its country couisin, the panther. Every untamed kit- ten grows up a wild cat. Every untrained colt grows up a wild horse. The off-spring of the domestic cattle, horses and hogs, which have grown up on the thinly- peopled western plains, unused to contact with their owners, are scarely less vicious than the buffalo, the wild horse or hog that never knew domestication. Animals are not less playful than children ; and like children their play will be an expression of their natu- ral disposition. Consequently, the young of domestic animals do not play the habits acquired by domestica- tion. But the play of their young will indicate the character and habits of their ancestors in the wild state. In their wild condition, animals largely obtain their food by one species devouring another. Even the gentler herbiverous species had to dispute the field with their carniverous neighbors. Hence, in their native SELF - EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY, 55 state, the life of beast and bird was a life of constant war-fare. They existed to devour and be devoured. Consequently the play of the young animal is sure to be a belligerent exercise of some kind. The young carniverous animals play a make-believe struggle for life or death ; and in this tussle, they mimic all their usual modes of attack and defense in the wild state. The feline species, the lion, the tiger, the leopard and the cat are a nimble, cunning and blood-thirsty family ; and it is noteworthy that they are all very playful when young, because much early practice is needed to develop their quick and dextrous mode of attack and defense in taking their prey. Observe two kittens engaged in their ceaseless fun and frolic. It is the same game over and over again with little variation. One seems to say to the other " You be rat and I will be cat." The one impersonating the rat moves away a short distance, the other playing cat approaches with a stealthy creep near enough to cover the distance with a single leap, and then with muffled teeth and claws, it springs upon its playfellow in mimic fury as if it would devour it alive ; one taking the attitude of furi- ous attack, the other of crafty defiance and defense. Give a kitten a ball and it will push it away, and repeat the same mode of attack and capture. The ball in this case answers for mouse, or bird. Puppies, pigs, colts, calves and lambs are all playful, and it is over and over again a make-believe imitation of their mode of warfare in a wild state. They play with such apparent rage that it seems that they would actually tear each other to pieces. The same is true of 56 CHILD - PLAY, OR domestic fowls. Ducks and geese sporting in the water are often observed to give a cry of alarm as if an enemy was near ; and then the whole flock with the rapidity of a flash dive beneath the water and come to the surface with a longer or shorter flight. This is a playful exhibition of the habits of the wild goose or wild duck when alarmed by sudden danger. All young creatures tend to resemble the earlier type from which the race sprung more than the adults do. The young of our domestic beasts and birds are evidently born wild beasts and wild birds, and their play will express the timorous and ferocious disposition of their wild ancestors. Born wild each young beast has to be trained afresh to domestic habits. This scientific generalization of play reads natural history backward. The original untutored nature will be reflected in the play or natural activity of all young things. This is equally true of the natural activity of the child. If our ancestors were barbarians with lower organi- zation and rude tastes and habits, their children for many generations at least, if not forever, must pass through the same stage of development. They will be born with incomplete organizations and rude tastes, and growth and culture must do afresh for each child just what they have done for the race. To know just what to expect of the child we should investigate the early character and habits of the Anglo- Saxon race. It is an incontestable fact that they were rocked in a gory cradle. They were coarse, crafty and cruel men. During all these past centuries, human SELF - EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 57 nature has preserved its identity. Every born child is rocked in the cradle of a common humanity. The eflfect of an ever advancing civilization, as inherited by their children, consists not in being better born than our fathers were, but in the possibility of growing better and profiting more by culture. But primitive human nature is still inborn in the modern child. Whatever of pacific virtue may be acquired by culture, we still carry about with us and ever ready to burst into a flame the smouldering, sinister, and ferocious instincts of our early ancestry. We get many glimpses of this repressed and restrained barbarism in adult life. The street brawl and the prize fight continue to have a baneful fascination. The numerous sale of revolvers, the interest taken in scenes of carnage, reveal the fact that blood-thirstiness is an underlying instinct of our nature. The child of the nineteenth-century father, in taste and manners, may be expected to begin life very much as the child of the pre-historic father. In fact the child of the cave dweller and the natural small boy from the country would at once join heart and hand to make a team. They both would have the same pro- pensity to steal apples and to break and destroy every breakable thing. Together they would go in ecstasy at the sight of squirrel, rabbit, or fish, and would find unspeakable pleasure in chasing butterflies and disem- boweling frogs and mice. They would relish fighting and after the battle they would compare scratches and boast of their wounds. Their idea of obedience would be to do the very thing they were told not to do. These rude proclivities would be so strong that warn- 58 CHILD -PLAY, OR ing and punishment would fail to correct their habits. In five minutes after being whipped they would repeat the same oflfence again. Herbert Spencer finds the explanation of the lawless propensity of the juvenile in the fact of his imperfect physical development. In brain and bodily structure, he belongs to an earlier age. He is born a pre-historic man with mind and moral faculties embryonic and dor- mant. Nothing but rude play can be expected until these faculties have had time to grow and be aroused to activity by culture. But we will hear Mr. Spencer speak for himself: "Do not expect from children a great amount of moral goodness. During his childhood every civilized man passes through that phase of char- acter exhibited by the barbarous race from which he is descended. As the child's feature's — a flat nose, for- ward-opening nostrils, large lips, wide-apart eyes, absent frontal sinus, etc. — resemble for a time those of the savage. So too do his instincts. Hence the tend- ency to cruelty, to thieving, to lying, so general among children — tendencies which, even without the aid of discipline, will become more or less modified just as the features do. The popular idea that children are innocent, while it may be true so far as refers to the knowledge of evil, is totally untrue so far as it refers to evil impulses, as half an hour's observation in the nursery will prove to any one. Boys when left to themselves in the public school treat each other more brutally than men do ; and were they left to themselves at an early age, their brutality would still be more con- spicuous.'' A mild way of saying every child in organi- SELF - EDUCATION THROUaH PLAY. 59 zation and character is born a barbarian and must be civilized by growth and culture. The human nature of the refined and modern times is evidently the same human nature of the savage and uncultivated ancient times, with the superadded capac- ity for improvement. It was no saint as it appeared in the dark and bloody ages of long ago, and it is not much more saintly now. It is only a wiser and a better education that has made a wiser and better age. As the young of domestic animals in their natural activ- ity play the wild animal ; so no sport is so much rel- ished by the average child as " playing Indian." Every small boy is expected to have a saving clause of meanness. Dr. Thomas Hunter, President of the New York Normal School, says : " One who has ob- served the habits of chidren can scarcely avoid the conclusion that man is born with an instinctive desire to destroy, and that the natural state of man is war. Every parent realizes this to his cost. The child de- lights to break things to pieces, to pluck up flowers, to break shrubs, to rob birds' nests, to smash eggs, to quarrel, to fight, and in fact to be a cruel little animal. It takes the constant guidance of his mother to avoid and check this savage propensity." But this early manifestation of depravity is no proph- ecy of a future desperado. The wise old butterfly did not despair because her child began life an ugly worm. It, too, will take on wings and paint in due time. There is not only something pious in the Sunday School literature that makes good children die early, but there is something beneficent in the Providence A 60 CHILD -PLAY, OR which removes those pious children so soon from earth. If they were permitted to live in most cases they would disappoint their fond parents' expectation ; instead of growing into phenomenal goodness they would grow into negatives. Some one has said that " the good- goody boy may become a man with energy to grease a wagon, but will not own the wagon or have money to buy the grease." The little desperado is probably sowing his wild oats early, and there will be time and soil for a second crop of better things. This early manifestation of depravity is more likely a drop of royal blood that still circulates in his veins. It is a spark of the soul of some barbar- ian chief who never knew defeat ; the inherited pluck and courage of some ancestral warrior who conquered the world and exercised the king's divine right to rule ; and this game little hero, who will do his worst or have the best of everything, will one day have courage to do and dare in the divine cause of right. Dr. O. W. Holmes, looking backward from his eight- ieth year, reports observation to this effect. He tells us that he knew some of those dear, good saints from the cradle up, and they lacked a great deal of being angels when they were small boys and girls, and adds : " What a remorseless destroyer the boy is. Nothing is desired by him so much as to be the owner of a gun, and no sport is relished so much as to go shooting. Wherever bird or squirrel or rabbit is seen, bang goes the gun, and fur and feathers fly like chaff." And the doctor philosophizes: "This instinct of destructive- ness was derived from the first roaming ancestry who SELF -EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 61 lived oflf the game captured in the chase." And yet those vicious little nimrods grew into men so senti- mentally kind they could not even kill a fly. When the fly trap was full the dear good soul would carry it into the yard and release all the nasty little captives at the risk of all being in the house again before an hour. Henry Ward Beecher, the philanthropist and natural- ist of riper years, when a small boy delighted in the vivisection of mice and birds and insects. Reporting reminiscences of his childhood : " As a boy I thought flies were meant to pluck out their wings and legs and see how they would act ; and that fish, birds and squir- rels were made for man's sport in catching and eating. I finally came to look differently on these little ani- mated bits of existence, and to regard them as parts and parcels of the great family for which the Heavenly Father cares and provides." RUDENESS BORN RIPE; GOODNESS IN THE BUD. Legend tells us that the Minerva sprang full-grown from the brain of Jupiter. It seems in some cases that all the meanness to which flesh is heir leaps full-grown from the tongue and fingers of the infantile desperado. The child is capable of being a little imp from the cradle up, and there is no telling what a diabolus he may become in a day and a year. The heart-sore and foot-sore mother has been heard to say that measles and mumps came as a beneficent Providence, a temporary relief. Watching by the little wayward's sick bed is not half so distracting as the constant vigilance required to keep him under control. 62 CHILD -PLAY, OR One little Charley B. is remembered. Smart as a young one ever was ; beautiful as angel of light, and bad as an angel of darkness. By way of experiment, the rod, the dark room, putting to bed without supper, ghost stories and tales of sad disaster had all been tried and failed. The only effect was to reveal the depths of infantile depravity and stubbornness of his unyielding will. Moral suasion only served to bring out exhibi- tions of cunning, craft and methods of evading discov- ery. If told of the black man who gets bad children, he defiantly answered, " I'd kill him." When warned of the tragical death of the boy who stole apples and went into the sewer to eat them, where he was suffo- cated with the foul gas, and found dead with some of the stolen apples in his pockets : " Why didn't he eat them quick, den nobody ud knowed it," was the vicious reply. They are not all good children who die early. When at the age of five death subdued that self-will which no other power had been able to subdue ; when death quieted those hands and feet which no other power had been able to quiet, the bereaved mother found sorrow- ful consolation in the thought she had rather see that beautiful form in the infantile coffin than live haunted with the dread of that life ending in the halter. No ; a thousand times no. Such children are not born for the gallows. It was the ardent impulses, the indomitable and fiery energies awakened in advance of the mental and moral faculties. These would certainly have come in due time. Such a childhood must be an unspeakable care to the mother ; but that is no sign the manhood will not be great, honored, good, a blessing to SELF - EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 63 the world. Faust said, " Two souls are born in each human breast, the good soul and the bad soul." The bad soul was more used by the ancients, and for this reason is born ripe, ready for rudeness as soon as the child is capable of activity, or at least has acquired a habit of quick growth and early maturity ; while the good soul is born in the seed and requires time, growth and culture to bring its virtues into active operation. The perverse impulses of the child are like the in- stincts of the animal, inherited from a long line of ancestry. In the lives and habits of his progenitors they were lived over and over again in endless succes- sion. What cycles came and went before man appeared on the globe, none can tell. But all the rock-written records, as interpreted by geologists, testify that ani- mals roamed through gigantic forests, that birds sported and warbled in the air, and that broad tempestuous seas were inhabited by fish, ages and myriads of ages, before man had an abode on this earth. The creator made life self-creating, self-developing and self-educat- ing. The ways and habits of living things, like great truths, first appear in rudimentary form and each suc- cessive generation furnishes more favorable soil for growth and development. What has often been done, and at first done with difiiculty by the parents, becomes a second nature, a self-acting law of being impressed on the life of the child, and goes into graceful and spontaneous operation. Here is the origin and explan- ation of animal instinct. It is organization and apti- tude growing more conformed to the necessities of the 64 CHIIiD-PLAY, OR animal each generation, till it is finally born with per- fect adaptation to its environments and goes into operation without thought or effort. Mr. Louis Robinson writing up the natural history of the horse and the foes he encountered in a wild state, makes the virtue of speed a necessity. He says " The galloping power of the horse was undoubtedly devel- oped to enable him to escape pursuit of the gaunt and hungry wolf. So certainly does this appear to my mind that I never see a wolf in a menagerie without feeling inclined to raise my hat to him and thank him for many an exhiliarating gallop on horseback. If his blood-thirsty fathers had not been, there would have been no marvelous speed belonging to the horse." From a long line of galloping steeds the colt has inherited an organization fitting him for speed and endurance. He is born into life on stilts, a timid con- trivance ready-made for scaring and running away. He is on his feet a race horse from the first day of his life. Deep in the unknown past some necessity stimulated the bird to song and nest-building and from a long line of warbling creatures each bird inherits ready-made the power of song and nest-building skill. From a countless number of honey gathering gener- ations, the bee has inherited ready-made the embodied wisdom of all the ancestral bees that ever buzzed and stung and invented bee-lines, and now each bee at its first flight abroad knows what plants yield honey, how to collect the treasures of sweet, at what angles to build the comb and all its exquisite geometrical and SELK-KDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 65 architectural contrivances are complete beyond the possibility of improvement. Little by little instinct was developed to perfection. Each successive genera- tion hastened to maturity the in-born habits and dis- positions of the ancestry. This is a universal law and applies to human life as well. Each child is born with a two-fold endowment ; on the one hand an animal organization and instinct inherited from the earliest and darkest ages. On the other hand mental and moral faculties which were not much exercised in the early history of the race. The idea of inheriting the earth by being meek, kind and just is comparatively a new idea. The golden rule and such injunctions as " Love your enemies," "Overcome evil with good," " Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ," were unknown to the first fathers of mankind. They were neither long known nor much practiced by the fathers and mothers who did know them. The ten commandments have not yet got into the blood and bones of the rising generation. The child- ren only inherit the moral and the christian impulses as the faintest stirring in their lives, which must be provided with the most favorable conditions of devel- opment. A great deal of family discipline is required in the form of sugar-plums and otherwise. Instruction in the catechism must^be given, patient nursing in the Sunday-school and a long period of being " preached at " to get the juveniles of our day to conform to this new mode of life or rather future mode of life. Human 66 CHILD -PLAY, OB beings some day may inherit these moral qualities ready-made, as a ripe instinct governing society both individually and collectively from the cradle up. But they must be first practiced for a thousand years or two or ten by the fathers and mothers. Dr. Holmes' idea of beginning the education of the child with the grand- mother was not far enough back. It is consoling for the mother to know that the vicious traits of character are born ripe in the child and go into operation as soon as the child is capable of activity, not from her fault or neglect, but because they were practiced by our progenitors in the dark and bloody times of long ago. Far back, in the childhood of the world, the long- haired savage led a life entirely devoted to his selfish impulses and appetites. Roaming the forest in quest of food, digging roots, searching for berries, with lance or club in hand-leaping from behind trees or rocks upon the wary animal, were the virtues by which he lived and which he bequeathed to coming generations. Every one for self was his motto. Completely free from all sense of responsibility, if his stomach were full, if his body were wrapped in a hairy skin he cared little whether starvation or some handy beast took the hindmost. His only thought of mutual help was for the purpose of blood-shedding. The only close com- munion he had with his fellow beings was in the war council where plans were devised for driving other savage hordes from his hunting ground. The moral code has been changed. What was once regarded as good is now thought to be evil. What once SELF^ EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 67 seemed to be right has grown to be a wrong. The very habits which we regard as the vices of the child and proof of the total depravity of the race were the saving virtues of the primitive man. The pacific habits esteemed and honored in our day were the unpardon- able sins in those early times of danger and strife. The doctrine of " the survival of the fittest " applied to those first born children of mankind, meant the sur- vival of the one with the fiercest temper, with swiftest feet, strongest arms and longest club. History of no ancient date tells of a Socrates who was removed by poison, a Christ who was crucified, a Stephen who was stoned, a Paul who was beheaded, a Servetus who was burned at the stake because they advocated the rule of faith, hope and charity as better than craft, cunning and violence. As late as the Greek and Roman civil- ization the gymnasium and palestra were the most revered temples on earth, and wrestling, running, box- ing and prize-fighting were esteemed as mental and moral culture and religious worship all in one. Think of the forlorn condition of the amiable and honest sav- age surrounded by other savages more cruel than the wild beasts of the wood. He would be a weakling ex- posed to the ridicule and jeers of his wild and cunning companions, and would speedily fall a prey to their rudeness and cruelty. The soul of one of these ancient savages, by a freak of transmigration, was reborn to modern earth. He found as companions in play a group of hoodlums, nat- ural boys and girls as unsophisticated as himself. His sole ambition was to climb higher, dive deeper, come 68 CHILD - PLAY OR, up dryer, to out-wrestle, to out-run, to out-jump and to out-fight the crowd. The little bully often came home badly bruised and scarred ; but his boast was that the other fellow got the worst of it. When his mother warned him of the danger of fighting. " Danger !" he answered defiantly, " If I didn't fight, I'd been dead long ago." A chapter of the old world bound in kid. Those traits of character early developed in the his- tory of the race are earliest developed in the life of the individual. Paul wrote this much in the Bible : " The first man was of the earth earthy, the second man was the Lord from heaven." The " old man " inherited ready made; the "new man,'' the child of moral and spiritual culture. " First, that which is natural," the life of the hunter and warrior, a life of stealth, craft and violence ; then " that which is spiritual," the life of love, trust and fraternity ; or as Faust puts it, " two souls dwell in the human breast." The bad soul wide awake, the good soul fast asleep. The child will be naturally quick and wise to be selfish, passionate and pugnacious ; but he must be taught to be unselfish, aflTectionate, truthful and obedient. With little or no training he will be able to do those things which the first fathers of mankind did in the wild and savage state. With little or no learning he is capable of be- coming a self-taught expert in malicious sport. Almost any teacher who has lived long enough to see the bitter bud grow into the ripe fruit, could tell a story of the little bully who once scratched her face and broke her heart. The young incorrigible was sent to school because he was intolerable at home. Here his SELF - EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 69 worst passions found a field of activity. He was dom- ineering and cruel to his associates, who gave him a wide berth ; self-willed and rebellious, he was a terror to his teacher, not only violating every injunction, but often anticipating and opposing her wishes with malig- nant delight. Any effort at restraint was resisted with kicks, scratches and curses. But as the story ends, the better side of his nature eventually prevailed, and with time and culture he grew to be one of the brightest and best of the school. Even George Washington, with all his superhuman goodness, had to pass through the juvenile period of vandalism. And if recent investigation had not discov- ered that there had never been a cherry tree on his father's farm, some future archaeologist would have dis- sipated this mythical model of youthful propriety, and shown that George's readiness to own up that he cut the cherry tree was an exhibition of braggadocio and defiance and not the result of remorse and loyalty to the truth. Such a child George would be the promise of General George Washington. It is not exhibitions of infantile rudeness which need excite the parent's alarm. The destiny of the child hangs upon later developments and future culture. He is to be born again as well in a natural as spiritual sense. Each child life is a paradox with infinite possi- bilities leading in different directions. What the end will be depends largely upon education. Borrowing a figure from Emerson, the Western traveler who has lost his way may safely throw the reins over his horse's neck, and the instinct of the beast will find the right 70 CHILD -PliAY, OB road and carry the rider safely to his home. But if we release young child-life from all control and give the reins into his own hands he will go back into barbar- ism. Gentleness and refinement, a sense of justice, a high regard for truth, a disposition to sacrifice our- selves for the good of others do not naturally grow up without culture. But nature eventually turning more into that direction works with and aids moral culture. In each human life there is a time of transition, like the change of season from winter to spring, when the reforming forces of nature co-operate with, multiply and intensify the garnered results of those who are laboring for the mental, moral and spiritual elevation of the human being. But while those graces are not altogether acquired virtues, they will not grow and blossom and bear fruit without culture. Legend informs us that Romulus was suckled by a wolf. This perhaps is an allegorical way the Romans had to account for the rude and cruel propensity of their ancestry. Each child will find something to nurse and cherish him. If not nursed and mothered by refined and gentle culture the wolf will become his foster mother, and he will grow up a wolf to his fellow-being. His way will be marked by disaster and sorrow. We repeat, the heedless disposition of the child, his rude manners and vicious disposition does not determine the career of the man. His future lies dormant and undeveloped in the mind and soul till growth and cul- ture awakens it into activity. The first man was of the earth earthy, the second man is the minded one. The word "man" means the "minded one,'' the "reasoning SELF - EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 71 one," the "teachable and progressive one." The mind or the soul is the human being's crowning attribute. It is the supreme endowment which distinguishes man from beast or bird. But it must not be forgotten that while the organization of the animal is born ripe, the powers and capacities of the mind are brought into active operations by education. Man is the " educa- table" one, and what instinct does for the animal, growth and education does for the man. Each beast and insect repeats over and over again in endless suc- cession the mode of life practiced by their progenitors ; but mind is educatable. Under the hand of the "minded one," old things are constantly passing away and new devices take their place. If one should return to earth from a former century, he would be exceed- ingly embarrassed with our new fangled notions. Our houses, our furniture, our clothing, our articles of use in field and factory would all be so strangely new to him that he could neither understand their use nor tell their names. An ever-advancing education is placing the progress of this age on the top of other progressive ages so that man is constantly surprised and startled at his own achievements. What wonder will this wonder- producing mind create next? This ever-changing and progressing world is but the counterpart of the change and unfolding of the human mind and soul. All this advancement is the outer expression of inner growth and progress. It is the visible manifestation of transformations and transfigurations which are con- stantly going on in the invisible mind and life of the human being. 72 CHILD - PLAY The evolution from the bitter bud to the sweet ripe fruit, the growth of the tiny gaping bird in the nest to the feathered songster in the air, the constant recon- struction and reformation of society in the rapid advance of the world from the low state barbarism to the new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, are all outer expressions and parallels of the evolution of childhood into manhood. It doth not yet appear what the child shall be, but we know that when he becomes a man he will put away childish things, or more correctly stated as he becomes a man those child- ish things will put themselves away. CHAPTER V. Physical Development Through Play. " Now hear the tops and marbles roll ! The floors— Oh, woe betide them ! And I must watch the banisters, For I know boys who ride them. But never mind, if eyes keep bright And limbs grow straight and limber ; We'd rather lose the tree's whole bark Than find unsound the timber. — Selected. Dr. O. W. Holmes permits his fancy to wander away back into pre-historic deeps in search of the origin of art and architecture. He wonders how the great un- known masters fixed the forms and eternal types of the monumental pyramids and obelisks. In the absence of historical testimony the Doctor assumes that in all ages wherever children and sand come together that the children would be engaged in play, and that the sand would be their plaything. How happy those desert born children must have been. With such an in- exhaustible source of innocent amusement as the desert sand aflforded it would be easy to be good. They would hardly be tempted to steal dates, to tease the young crocodiles or play too near the donkey's heels, or be un- pleasant with each other as children in less favored lands have often been because they could find nothing else to do. 6 (73) 74 CHILD - PLAY, OR Among the familiar sights around the tent doors were seen the sloping sides of miniature sand pyramids formed by the grains of sand streaming through the closed hands of those little sun-browned desert boys and girls, for whom the desert sand formed their earli- est playthings. The older people caught the idea, or perhaps from force of habit continued their play tnto adult years, and playing on a larger scale and with more enduring material, built the pyramids. But if play did not lay the foundation of the Egyp- tian pyramids it does lay the foundation of the child's own physical development. Life is a bewildering mys- tery, and strangest of all because it was created self- creating and self-impelling. Children are born in their weakness, with the possibility of bodily growth, thought and action. This in-born potency of being and doing instinctively impels them to effort. By their spon- taneous and playful efforts they bring into exercise this creative energy, and by doing develops capacity for better doing. The child talks so much and plays so much because the inborn spirit of life stimulates him to prattle and play as a condition of bodily and mental growth. Play is self-creative life doing the work of creation. When animals play it is for the creation of animal life. When the child plays it is for the creation of human life. When the muscles play it is for the creation of physical life. When the mind plays it is for the crea- tion of mental life. It is through play that nature develops the child in all the faculties, both physical and mental. SELF - EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. The child's play has a grand meaning. It signifies nothing less than the work of self-creation. These little busy idlers devoted to their silly toys are engaged in building greater than the Egyptian Pyramids. They are the architects of their own body ; yes, their minds and souls as well. The circulating life current is filled and kept going by their playful activity. The human body, so beautifully and wonderfully made, is composed of more than two hundred bones, more than five hun- dred muscles, more than ten thousand nerves, arteries and veins, and each of these has a daily growth, a daily wear and needs daily repairing. Each day the vital centers must be renewed, the efiete matter eliminated and new building material supplied to the body in such a way that bone food will be interwoven with bone, mus- cle food with the muscle, appropriate nourishment for nerve, artery, nail and hair carried to its appropriate place and all absorbed and assimilated into the life of the re- spective parts of the body. The old religious code taught " that if a man did not work, neither should he eat." The law of nature giving sanction to this precept has set a fear- ful penalty on eating when the food is not earned by labor of some kind. Food taken by those who exist in torpid inactivity not only fails to nourish, but it is converted into poison and destroys health and life. This law is as severely true for the child as for the adult. The child that does not play cannot eat and live. Exercise is necessary to all, and especially to young life, to stimulate the different organs of the body, to hunger for food, to digest and assimilate their nourishment. 76 CHILD -PLAY, OR If any member of the child's body is deprived of the free use of itself, growth is arrested. A visit to any large surgical sanitarium will afford many sad illustra- tions. There can be seen hundreds of different forms of deformity, withered limbs hanging hideous and help- less not half their natural size ; crooked spines, dwarfed bodies, men's heads on bodies not larger than those of children. Those malformations are no longer a mysterious providence. The defective limb had by some accident been disqualified for free play, and as a necessary result was starved and dwarfed into fearful deformity. The exercised members of the body had grown to full and symmetrical form ; the enfeebled and inactive limbs were only half grown, and that a sickly and unsightly growth. The remedy is, remove the impedient. Give the dwarfed limb its natural activity and nature will do the rest, restore it whole like the other. This alone is a sufficient solution of the play prob- lem. Some impatient of the delay and apparent waste of time may say, "What have these juveniles ever done ? What worthy results can they show for all the ceaseless activity, eating and acting their ten thousand antics?" After breaking most other fragile things it seemed as if they would tear themselves to pieces ; ex- \ pensive boarders wasting their time in idleness, they "^never fail to be hungry and eat. But in the versatility of their fun and frolic they set the thousand occult parts of their body going in the work of self-creation. Phideas gave his life to build the Parthenon, and spent years of loving care on a single statue. To carve SELF - EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 77 out a Venus or an Apollo, to shape a block of marble into an exact resemblance of a beautiful human form was work enough to immortalize one name. But these little automatic workers have been the architects of their own bodies, the creator of their own minds ; not a dumb, dead, make-believe ; not a surface imitation of some living reality. But this childish play has built and fashioned a real human body, animated with life and health, thrilled with hope, thought and love, a fit temple for the immortal soul. A little girl that had been promised a visit to the country changed the amen of her last home prayer to " Dood by, Dod, I'm doing to the tountry." No, not that way, God goes with the child to the country. The child grows by fidgeting, by out-door romps. The fields and forests are to those little folks the very gate of heaven, and like Jacob of old, God is with children in their out-door life when they know it not, and even inclines them to go there sometimes when we think their eagerness to be away is a temptation of the evil one. A prosey Sunday-school teacher began his address at a late hour of the meeting with the remark *' I do not like to be disturbed while speaking and if any of the children are weary and would like to go before I have finished I would like them to do so now." After a moment's pause, a little fellow took his hat and walked out, then another, and another till only one child was left in the school, and that one was sound asleep. Those who would catch children must take them on the wing. A kind-hearted old clergyman hoping to 78 CHILD -PLAY, OR inspire a boy with ideas of a higher and a better life promised to give him a new testament. The little wide-awake fellow quick to see his opportunity, answered, "Yes. Please give me a new testament and give me a new pop-gun too." A Sunday-school teacher offered a heedless lad a bright new silver dollar if he would learn his bible verses. The little torment spoke up as quick as thought, "You bet, I'll get 'em. Cause I want the dol- lar to buy a new sled," Children are thoughtless, irreverent, always hungry and caring only for play. We often inquire why were they made thus. But where we fail to understand and manage them nature may still have them under perfect control. Compare the ruddy, romping child unconsciously impelled to the conditions of growth and health by self-creating and self-regulating nature within — com- pare him with the self-conscious student of fresh air, diet and all the laws of health. This student of his own anatomy by brooding over them creates the very evils he would avoid. The dimpled, curly, rosy-cheeked cherub is growing into the highest type of physical beauty without ever stopping play long enough to think or care for beauty. He is obeying all the laws of health without being conscious that there are any such laws. He is cultivating and developing body, mind, senses, and sociability in symmetrical proportion, all by playing his sweet little pranks till hungry and over- powered by a fatigue, he eats, lies down and sleeps. SELF - EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. 79 and, if he thinks at all, it is only in eager desire to renew his madness and folly another day. Dear little thoughtless thing! He is building wiser than he knows. Let him who thinks play lost time or busy idleness, observe the fearful consequences of its privations. Let him observe the effect on the temper and morals of the child. The child denied the exercise and play grows nervous, peevish, ill-tempered, and seems to suffer from general uncomfortableness. Well- guided and well-timed play is necessary to make the temper happy and sunny, "^lay is necessary to health. The fearful mortality among children m crowded flats and tenement houses where the play-grounds are restricted does more to reduce the average of human life than any other cause, intemperance excepted. t/