to the actions of growing and unfolding men and women. The little child soon learns that his generally patient nurse will sometimes be cross, his tender mother will sometimes be stern, his yielding playmates will sometimes become aggressive. His first experience of human nature, therefore, is that it is not to be relied upon. His perplexity is increased by the fact that persons sometimes say one thing when they mean another, and the very existence of ideal standards to which the most conscientious effort is not always able to square conduct introduces another element of uncertainty into his judgments. Recognizing our human instability, we appreciate the questions with which Froebel closes his commentary on Beckoning the Pigeons: 'Mother, did not your children respond more quickly to your words when they were too young to understand the meaning of words than they do now when this meaning is clear to them? Why is this? Must the animals teach us? In their language, word and fact, fact and word, word and deed, deed and word, are always one and the same!" Since Helen is interested in the child-study movement I suppose she has considered the sugges The snake which the. tion that fables of animals should be told in the kindergarten, and I hope she feels as I do, that most fables are open to objection, because they deal with motives beyond the range of childish experience. Rousseau made an analysis of the fable of La Fontaine which relates how the fox by flattering the raven induced her to sing, and then ran away with the meat she dropped in opening her mouth. Do we wish to inoculate children with suspicion and distrust? farmer warmed in his bosom only to be stung, the fox calling the grapes he could not reach sour, are other examples of meanings we would not willingly make accessible to childish imagination. A second objection to most fables is that their symbolism is artificial and the animals they portray are not true brutes but human beings in brute disguise. Discarding such artificial symbols, we discover the real life of animals to be symbolic because it presents analogies to human emotions, relationships, and experiences. Actual contact with animal life and actual care of animal pets are better for little children than stories about animals, although the latter are valuable as interpreters of experience. It seems to me the Animal Songs of the Mother-Play, with their accompanying pictures, meet quite adequately the needs of children under six years of age. Having recognized his kinship with bird and beast, the child begins to imitate both. I need not expand this theme, for you have written me how Harold turns himself into every animal he sees, and how almost impossible it is to follow his rapidly shifting incarnations. One sentence in your letter suggests the reflection that this tendency to imitate animals should be carefully watched and guided. For if Harold can care so much to be a chicken that he actually climbs the perch to roost with his feathered friends, and if in his ambition to be a motherhen he has crouched for an hour over an egg, he might be betrayed into repeating actions injurious to his moral development. Froebel has been singularly wise in the animal activities he has selected for imitation. It is well to spring with the squirrel, gallop with the horse, fly with the bird, swim with the fish. It is well to win from the far-flying, homecoming pigeons the prescient joy of a broadening experience, and the prophecy of that luminous and illuminating love which sanctifies experience. It is well to learn from the Grass-Mowing Game how man has bent the brute to service, from the Knights the mastery of life by spirit, from the Barnyard the care and kindness we owe to the creatures upon whom we have set our yoke. The more we study these plays the greater will be our respect for the unerring judgment which enabled Froebel to omit nothing in animal life which could nourish ideal impulse and to avoid everything which might debase the human soul. The Fish in the Brook is an illustration of that higher symbolism which pierces to the soul of a natural object. The joyous motion of the fish in clear water, the ease with which in its strong flight the bird cleaves the air, are true physical counterparts of spiritual activity in a pure element, and therefore thrill the soul with their prophecy of freedom. "True hope," says Shakespeare, “is swift, and flies with swallow's wings." The poet in Timon of Athens declares that his poem shall "fly an eagle flight bold, and forth on, leaving no track behind," and Richard Lovelace exactly interprets the prophecy of Froebel's play when he writes: If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free, |