the several authors suggested that he had any such theory in mind when preparing his book; each one simply took it for granted that his "home games" would be played by the entire household. Would not any of us in America, writing a book of this description, proceed from precisely the same starting-point?

We all recollect the extreme amazement in the Castle of Dorincourt occasioned by the sight of the Earl playing a "home game" with Little Lord Fauntleroy. No American grandfather thus engaged would cause the least ripple of surprise. Little Lord Fauntleroy, we recall, had been born in America, and had lived the whole ten years of his life with Americans. He had acquired the habit, so characteristic of the children of our Nation, of including his elders in his games. Quite naturally, on his first day at the Castle, he said to the Earl, "My new game—wouldn't you like to play it with me, grandfather?" The Earl, we remember, was astonished. He had never been in America!

American grown-ups experience no astonishment when children invite them to participate in their play. We are accustomed to such invitations. To our ready acceptance of them the children are no less used. "Will you play with us?" they ask with engaging confidence. "Of course we will!" we find ourselves cordially responding.

I chanced, not a great while ago, to be ill in a hospital on Christmas
Day. Toward the middle of the morning, during the "hours for visitors,"
I heard a faint knock at my door.

Before I could answer it the door opened, and a little girl, her arms full of toys, softly entered.

"Did you say 'Come in'?" she inquired.

Without waiting for a reply, she carefully deposited her toys on the nurse's cot near her. Then, closing the door, she came and stood beside my bed, and gazed at me in friendly silence.

"Merry Christmas!" I said.

"Oh, Merry Christmas!" she returned, formally, dropping a courtesy.

She was a sturdy, rosy-cheeked child, and, though wearing a fluffy white dress and slippers, she looked as children only look after a walk in a frosty wind. Clearly, she was not a patient.

"Whose little girl are you?" I asked.

"Papa's and mamma's," she said promptly.

"Where are they?" I next interrogated.

"In papa's room—down the hall, around the corner. Papa is sick; only, he's better now, and will be all well soon. And mamma and I came to see him, with what Santa Claus brought us."

"I see," I commented. "And these are the things Santa Claus brought you?" I added, indicating the toys on the cot. "You have come, now, to show them to me?"

Her face fell a bit. "I came to play at them with you," she said. "Your nurse thought maybe you'd like to, for a while. Are you too sick to play?" she continued, anxiously; "or too tired, or too busy?"

How seldom are any of us too sick to play; or too tired, or too busy! "I am not," I assured my small caller. "I should enjoy playing. What shall we begin with?" I supplemented, glancing again toward the toy-bestrewn cot.

"Oh, there are ever so many things!" the little girl said. "But," she went on hesitatingly, "your things—perhaps you'd like—might I look at them first?"

Most evident among these things of mine was a small tree, bedizened, after the German fashion, with gilded nuts, fantastically shaped candies, and numerous tiny boxes, gayly tied with tinsel ribbons. "What's in the boxes—presents or jokes?" the little girl questioned. "Have you looked?"

"I hadn't got that far, when you came," I told her; "but I rather think—jokes."

"I'd want to know" she suggested.

When I bade her examine them for me, she said: "Let's play I am Santa Claus and you are a little girl. I'll hand you the boxes, and you open them."

We did this, with much mutual enjoyment. The boxes, to my amusement and her delight, contained miniature pewter dogs and cats and dolls and dishes. "Why," my little companion exclaimed, "they aren't jokes; they are real presents! They will be just right to have when little children come to see you!"

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

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

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

"So have I!" I exclaimed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

One autumn a friend of mine, the mother of a three-year-old boy and of a daughter aged sixteen, said to me: "This is my daughter's first term in the high school; she will need my help. My boy is just at the age when it takes all the spare time I have to keep him out of mischief; how shall I manage?"

"Send the boy to kindergarten," I advised. "He is ready to go; and it will be good for him. He will bring some of the 'occupations' home with him; and they will keep him out of mischief for you."

She sent the boy to a little kindergarten in the neighborhood.

About two months later, I said to her, "I suppose the kindergarten has solved the problem of more spare time for your daughter's new demands upon you?"

"Well—in a way," she replied, dubiously. "It gives me the morning free; but—"

"Doesn't the boy bring home any