grown-ups dared to be absolutely ingenuous. It was upon a honeymoon, when if ever, adults have the right to yield to juvenile impulses. As the groom was titled and the bride fair, society took it ill that the two should retire to their country house and deny access to all neighbours. One at last called, too important to be denied admittance by the servants, and the astonished visitor discovered the happy pair stretched over the dining-room table, training flies whose wings had been clipped, to pull, in a harness of threads, little paper wagons! This had been their absorbing occupation for ten blissful days!

An important element of play seems to be the doing of things in miniature. See Stevenson, for instance, prone upon the floor, involved in romantic campaigns, massing his troops of tin soldiers, occupying strategic positions in hall and passage, skirmishing over the upstairs "roads of the Third Class, impassable for artillery," intercepting commissary trains labouring up from the Base of Operations in the kitchen, deploying cavalry-screens upon the rug, and out-manoeuvering the wily foe that defends the verandah, both being bound by the strict treaties of the play. There is your ideal big brother, and the game of toy soldiers is glorified into weeks of excitement!

The Japanese, immortal children, carry the game of diminution to its extreme. The dwarfed trees and the excruciating carved ivories are not the only symptoms of this delightful disease; for the perfection of the spirit of play one must see their miniature gardens, often the life-employment of the owners. No matter how small the patch of ground employed, every inch is perfect. Pebble by pebble, almost grain by grain, the area is arranged, the tiny rivulet is guided between carefully curved banks, wee bridges span the shores, little lanterns and pagodas are artfully placed, plants and flowers are sown, trees planted, fishes are domiciled, till the garden is a replica of Nature at her best. Each view is a toy landscape, and without a scale, as seen in a photograph, for instance, one might think it a garden of the gods. And yet, there is a sort of play where one may use infinite distances, macrocosms for microcosms, if one has the courage and the power of visualization. These games are purely mental, feats of the imagination, though not nearly so difficult as might be thought. I know a sober, workaday lawyer, for instance, who combines the two methods with extraordinary cleverness. His income is not derived solely from his practice, I need hardly say. You will not catch him at his fascinating diversion, for his table is strewn with books and papers, and his playthings are not noticeable amongst the professional litter.

I have known him to sit for hours gazing at the table, and, once in his confidence--for there is a fraternity of players, and one must give the grip and prove fellowship--he will tell you that he has shrunk to but an inch in height, so that, to him, his desk seems to be some three hundred feet long by a hundred feet wide, and its plateau is elevated some two hundred feet above the floor; as high, that is, as a church. Assuming that he has, by some miraculous means shrunk to one-fiftieth of his stature, the size of everything visible is, of course, increased in a like proportion. His diverting occupation, under this queer state of things, is to explore his little domain, and exist as well as is possible. What adventures has he not had! There was the terrific combat with a cockroach as big as a dragon, which he finally slew with a broken needle! There was the dust storm, when the care-taker swept, and the huge snow crystals like white pie-plates, that came in when the window was opened. He had an enormous difficulty in getting water from a glass tumbler, and he broke his teeth upon the crystals of sugar that, as a lawyer, he had been thoughtful enough to strew upon the table for the benefit of himself as an Inchling. I believe he is now attempting to escape to the floor by means of a spool of thread, if he cannot make up his mind to risk a descent by means of a paper parachute. It is a world of his own, as real to him as the child's toy paradise, a retreat immune from the cares of his daily life, a never-tiring playground, with perpetual discoveries possible. He, if any one, has discovered not only the art of playing, but has applied the science as well!