CHILDREN AND PLAY
The visitor who sees our neighborhood for the first time at the hour
when school is dismissed reacts with joy or dismay to the sight, not
paralleled in any part of the world, of thousands of little ones on a
single city block.
Out they pour, the little hyphenated Americans, more conscious of their
patriotism than perhaps any other large group of children that could
be found in our land; unaware that to some of us they carry on their
shoulders our hopes of a finer, more democratic America, when the worthy
things they bring to us shall be recognized, and the good in their
old-world traditions and culture shall be mingled with the best that lies
within our new-world ideals. Only through knowledge is one fortified
to resist the onslaught of arguments of the superficial observer who,
dismayed by the sight, is conscious only of “hordes” and “danger to
America” in these little children.
They are irresistible. They open up wide vistas of the many lands from
which they come. The multitude passes: swinging walk, lagging step;
smiling, serious—just little children, forever appealing, and these,
perhaps, more than others, stir the emotions. “Crime, ignorance, dirt,
anarchy!” Not theirs the fault if any of these be true, although
sometimes perfectly good children are spoiled, as Jacob Riis, that
buoyant lover of them, has said. As a nation we must rise or fall as we
serve or fail these future citizens.
[Illustration]
Their appeal suggests that social exclusions and prejudices separate far
more effectively than distance and differing language. They bring a hope
that a better relationship—even the great brotherhood—is not impossible,
and that through love and understanding we shall come to know the shame
of prejudice.
[Illustration]
Instinctively the sympathetic observer feels the possibilities of the
young life that passes before the settlement doors, and sincerity demands
that something shall be known of the conditions, economic, political,
religious, or, perchance, of the mere spirit of venture that brought
them here. How often have the conventionally educated been driven to
the library to obtain that historic perspective of the people who are
in our midst, without which they cannot be understood! What fascinating
excursions have been made into folklore in the effort to comprehend some
strange custom unexpectedly encountered!
When the anxious friends of the dying Italian brought a chicken to be
killed over him, the tenement-house bed became the sacrificial altar of
long ago; and when the old, rabbinical-looking grandfather took hairs
from the head of the sick child, a bit of his finger-nail, and a garment
that had been close to his body, and cast them into the river while he
devoutly prayed that the little life might be spared, he declared his
faith in the purification of running water.
[Illustration]
It is necessary to spend a summer in our neighborhood to realize fully
the conditions under which many thousands of children are reared. One
night during my first month on the East Side, sleepless because of the
heat, I leaned out of the window and looked down on Rivington Street.
Life was in full course there. Some of the push-cart venders still sold
their wares. Sitting on the curb directly under my window, with her
feet in the gutter, was a woman, drooping from exhaustion, a baby at her
breast. The fire-escapes, considered the most desirable sleeping-places,
were crowded with the youngest and the oldest; children were asleep on
the sidewalks, on the steps of the houses and in the empty push-carts;
some of the more venturesome men and women with mattress or pillow
staggered toward the riverfront or the parks. I looked at my watch. It
was two o’clock in the morning!
[Illustration]
Many times since that summer of 1893 have I seen similar sights, and
always I have been impressed with the kindness and patience, sometimes
the fortitude, of our neighbors, and I have marveled that out of
conditions distressing and nerve-destroying as these so many children
have emerged into fine manhood and womanhood, and often, because of their
early experiences, have become intelligent factors in promoting measures
to guard the next generation against conditions which they know to be
destructive.
Before I lived in the midst of this dense child population, and while
I was still in the hospital, I had been touched by glimpses of the
life revealed in the games played in the children’s ward. Up to that
time my knowledge of little ones had been limited to those to whom the
people in fairy tales were real, and whose games and stories reflected
the protective care of their elders. My own earliest recollections of
play had been of story-telling, of housekeeping with all the things in
miniature that grown-ups use, and of awed admiration of the big brother
who graciously permitted us to witness hair-raising performances in the
barn, to which we paid admittance in pins. The children in the hospital
ward who were able to be about, usually on crutches or with arms in
slings, played “Ambulance” and the “Gerry Society.” The latter game
dramatized their conception of the famous Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children as an ogre that would catch them. The ambulance
game was of a child, or a man at work, injured and carried away to the
hospital.
Many years’ familiarity with the children’s attempts to play in the
streets has not made me indifferent to its pathos, which is not the
less real because the children themselves are unconscious of it. In the
midst of the push-cart market, with its noise, confusion, and jostling,
the checker or crokinole board is precariously perched on the top of a
hydrant, constantly knocked over by the crowd and patiently replaced by
the little children. One tearful small boy described his morning when
he said he had done nothing but play, but first the “cop” had snatched
his dice, then his “cat” (a piece of wood sharpened at both ends), and
nobody wanted him to chalk on the sidewalk, and he had been arrested for
throwing a ball.
A man since risen to distinction in educational circles, whose childhood
was passed in our neighborhood, told me how he and his companions had
once taken a dressmaker’s lay figure. They had no money to spend on
the theater and no place to play in but a cellar. They had admired the
gaudy posters of a melodrama in which the hero rescues the lady and
carries her over a chasm. Having no lady in their cast, they borrowed
the dressmaker’s lay figure—without permission. Fortunately, and
accidentally, they escaped detection. It is not difficult to see how the
entire course of this boy’s career might have been altered if arrest had
followed, with its consequent humiliation and degradation. At least,
looking back upon it, the young man sees how the incident might have
deflected his life.
The instruction in folk-dancing which the children now receive in
the public schools and recreation centers has done much to develop a
wholesome and delightful form of exercise, and has given picturesqueness
to the dancing in the streets. But yesterday I found myself pausing on
East Houston Street to watch a group of children assemble at the sound of
a familiar dance from a hurdy-gurdy, and looking up I met the sympathetic
smile of a teamster who also had stopped. The children, absorbed in their
dance, were quite unconscious that congested traffic had halted and that
busy people had taken a moment from their engrossing problems to be
refreshed by the sight of their youth and grace. For that brief instant
even the cry of “War Extra” was unheeded.
* * * * *
Touching as are the little children deprived of opportunity for wholesome
play, a deeper compassion stirred our hearts when we began to realize
the critically tender age at which many of them share the experiences,
anxieties, and tragedies of the adult. I cannot efface from my memory
the picture of a little eight-year-old girl whom I once found standing
on a chair to reach a washtub, trying with her tiny hands to cleanse
some bed-linen which would have been a task for an older person. Every
few minutes the child got down from her chair to peer into the next room
where her mother and the new-born baby lay, all her little mind intent
upon giving relief and comfort. She had been alone with her mother when
the baby was born and terror was on her face.
I think the memory never left her, but it may be only that her presence
called up, even after the lapse of years, a vision of the anxious little
face inevitably contrasted in my mind with the picture of irresponsible
childhood.
At about the same time we made the acquaintance of the K⸺ family, through
nursing one of the children. The mother was a large-framed, phlegmatic,
seemingly emotionless type, although she did show appreciation of our
liking for her children. The father was only occasionally mentioned. We
assumed that he was away seeking work, a common explanation then of the
absence of the men of the families. One afternoon I stopped at their
house to make arrangements for the children’s trip to the country. Early
the next morning, awakened by a pounding on the door, I opened it to
find little Esther beside herself with excitement, repeating over and
over, “My mother she die! My mother she die!” Following fast, it was not
possible to keep pace with her. When, breathless, I entered their rooms
it was to see the mother’s body hanging from a doorway. She had been
brooding over a summons to testify in court that morning against her
husband, who had been arrested for bigamy, and this was her answer to the
court and to the other woman.
The frightened little children were scattered among different
institutions. From one of these Esther was sent West, to a home that was
found for her. Possibly she was so young that the terrible picture faded
from her mind. At least there was no mention of it in the first letter
which she wrote, announcing that her new home was a farm and that they
had “six cows, eighty chickens, eleven pigs, and a _nephew_.” The nephew
Esther eventually married.
In the first party of children that we sent to the country were three
little girls, daughters of a skilled cobbler. The mother, a complaining,
exacting invalid, spent a large proportion of her husband’s earnings for
patent medicines. Annie, not quite twelve, was the household drudge,
and the coming of the settlement nurse lifted only part of her burden.
The new friends, determined to get at least two weeks of care-free
childhood for the little girls, procured an invitation for them, through
a Fresh-Air agency, from a farmer in the western part of the state. It
was necessary to secure the mother’s admission to a hospital during the
time the children would be absent from home—not an easy task, as she was
not what is termed a “hospital case.” When we met the children at the
railroad station on their return, their joyousness and bubbling spirits
attracted the attention of the on-lookers; but as Annie neared home its
responsibilities fell like a heavy cloud upon her, and before we reached
the tenement she was silent. Her quick eye discerned the absence of the
brick which had kept the front hall door open, and in a second she had
darted into the yard and replaced it. Before we left, with sleeves rolled
up she was beginning to wash the pile of dishes that had accumulated
in her absence. Gone was the gayety. The little drudge had resumed her
place. Later, when the child swore falsely to her age, and the notary
public, upon whose certificate employment papers could at that time
be obtained, affixed his signature to her perjury, the position she
secured as cash girl in the basement of a department store was, to her,
emancipation from hateful labor and an opportunity for fellowship with
children.
* * * * *
Recalling early days, I am constantly reminded of the sympathy and
comprehension of those friends who, though not stimulated as my comrade
and I were by constant reminders of the children’s needs, from the
beginning promoted and often anticipated our efforts to provide innocent
recreation. We had not thought of the possibility of giving pleasure to
large groups of children in picnics and day parties, when a friend, a
few days after our arrival in the neighborhood, asked us to celebrate
his sister’s birthday by giving “fun” to some of our new acquaintances.
I yet remember the thrill I felt when I realized that this gift was not
for shoes or practical necessities, but for “just what children anywhere
would like.”
Two memories of this first party stand out sharply: the songs the
children sang,—“She’s More to be Pitied than Censured,” and “Judge,
Forgive Him, ’Tis His First Offense,”—painfully revealing a precocious
knowledge, and their ecstasy at the sight of a wonderful dogwood tree.
Now, when the settlement children go on day parties, they have another
repertory, and the music they learn in the public schools reflects the
finer thought for the child.
[Illustration]
During the two years that Miss Brewster and I lived in the Jefferson
Street house we frequently made up impromptu parties to visit the distant
parks, usually on Sunday afternoons when we were likely to be free. After
a while it was not difficult to secure comradeship for the children from
men and women of our acquaintance, and the parties were multiplied. In
the winter, rumors of “a fine hill all covered with snow” on Riverside
Drive would be a stimulus to secure a sled or improvise a toboggan, and
we found that, given opportunity and encouragement, the city tenement
boys threw themselves readily into venturesome sport.
[Illustration: AND THEIR ECSTASY AT THE SIGHT OF A WONDERFUL DOGWOOD
TREE]
Happily some of the early prejudice against ball-playing on Sunday has
vanished. We were perplexed in those days to explain to the lads why,
when they saw the ferries and trains convey golfers suitably attired
and expensively equipped for a day’s sport, their own games should
outrage respectable citizens and cause them to be constantly “chased”
by the police. The saloons could be entered, as everybody knew, and I
remember a father, defending his eight-year-old son from an accusation of
theft, instancing as proof of the child’s trustworthiness that “all the
Christians on Jackson Street sent him for their beer on Sundays.”
In our search for a place where the boys might play undisturbed, one of
the settlement residents, a never-failing friend of the young people,
invoked the Federal Government itself, and secured for them an unused
field on Governor’s Island.
Now, in summer time, many of the organized activities of the settlement
are removed from the neighborhood. Early in the season the “hikers” begin
their walks with club leaders. I felt a glow of happiness one Sunday
morning when I stood on the steps of our house and watched six different
groups of boys set off for the country, with ball and bat and sandwiches,
each group led by a young man who had himself been a member of our early
parties and had been first introduced to trees and open spaces, and the
more active forms of healthful play by his settlement friends.
[Illustration]
The woeful lack of imagination displayed in building a city without
recognizing the need of its citizens for recreation through play, music,
and art, has been borne in upon us many times. New Yorkers need to be
reminded that the Metropolitan Museum of Art was effectually closed to
a large proportion of the citizens until, on May 31, 1891, it opened
its doors on Sundays. It is interesting to recall that of the 80,000
signatures to the petition for this privilege, 50,000 were of residents
of the lower East Side and were presented by the “Working People’s
Petition Committee.” The report of the Museum trustees following the
Sunday opening notes that after a little disorder and confusion at
the start the experiment proved a success; that the attendance was
“respectable, law-abiding, and intelligent,” and that “the laboring
classes were well represented.” They were also obliged to report,
however, that the Sunday opening had “offended some of the Museum’s best
friends and supporters,” and that it had “resulted in the loss of a
bequest of $50,000.”
* * * * *
When we left the tenement house we were fortunate to find for sale, on
a street that still bore evidences of its bygone social glory, a house
which readily lent itself to the restorer’s touch. Tradition says that
many of these fine old East Side houses were built by cabinetmakers
who came over from England during the War of 1812 and remained here as
citizens. The generous purchaser allowed us freedom to repair, restore,
and alter, as our taste directed. Attractive as we found the house, we
were even more excited over the possibilities of the little back yard.
Our first organized effort for the neighborhood was to convert this
yard and one belonging to an adjacent school, with, later, the yard of
a third house rented by one of our residents, into a miniature but very
complete playground. There was so little precedent to guide us that our
resourcefulness was stimulated, and we succeeded in achieving what the
President of the National Playground Association has called the “Bunker
Hill” of playgrounds.
Along the borders we planted bright-colored flowers—which were not
disturbed by the children. An old wistaria vine on a trellis covered
nearly a third of the playground, and two ailanthus trees, usually
regarded with contempt by tree lovers, were highly cherished by those who
otherwise would have lived a treeless life. Window-boxes jutted from the
rear windows of the two houses controlled by the settlement, and in one
corner, shaded by a striped awning, we put the big sand-pile. Joy-giving
“scups” (the local name for swings) were erected, and some suitable
gymnastic apparatus, parallel bars and overhead ladder placed. Baby
hammocks were swung, their occupants tenderly cared for by little mothers
and little fathers. Manual training was provided by a picturesque sailor
from Sailors’ Snug Harbor, who, at a stretching frame, taught the making
of hammocks.
In the morning under the pergola an informal kindergarten was conducted,
and in the afternoon attendants directed play and taught the use of
gymnastic apparatus. Later in the day the mothers and older children
came, and a little hurdy-gurdy occasionally marked the rhythm of the
dance. So interested in the playground were the household and their
visitors that at odd moments an enthusiast would rush in from other
duties and give the hurdy-gurdy an extra turn, to supplement the
entertainment. At night the baby hammocks and chairs were stored away and
Japanese lanterns illuminated the playground, which then welcomed the
young people who, after their day’s work, took pleasure in each other’s
society and in singing familiar songs.
[Illustration: IT HAS BEEN CALLED THE “BUNKER HILL” OF PLAYGROUNDS]
[Illustration: THE CHILDREN PLAY ON OUR ROOF]
On Saturday afternoons the playground was used almost exclusively by
fathers and mothers, but it was a pretty sight at all times, and the
value placed upon it by those who used it was far in excess of our own
estimate. It was something more than amusement that moved us when a young
couple, who had been invited to one of the evening parties, stood at the
back door of the settlement house and gazed admiringly at the little
pleasure place. Gowned in white, we awaited our guests, and as I rose
from the bench under the pergola to cross the yard and give them welcome,
the young printer said with enthusiasm, “This must be like the scenes of
country life in English novels.”
It was a heaven of delight to the children, and ingenuity was displayed
by those who sought admittance. The children soon learned that “little
mothers” and their charges had precedence, and there was rivalry as to
who should hold the family baby. When (as rarely happened) there was
none in the family, a baby was borrowed. Six-year-olds, clasping babies
of stature almost equal to their own, would stand outside, hoping to
attract attention to their special claims. Once, when the playground was
filled to capacity, and the sidewalk in front of the house was thronged,
the Olympian at the gate endeavored to make it clear that no more could
enter. One persistent small girl stood stolidly and when reminded of the
condition said, “Yes, teacher, but can’t I get in? I ain’t got no mother.”
There was much illness, unemployment, and consequent suffering the
next winter. One day, when I visited a school in the neighborhood, the
principal asked the pupils if they knew me. She doubtless anticipated
some reference to the material services which the settlement had
rendered, but the answer to her question was a glad chorus of, “Yes,
ma’am, yes, ma’am, she’s our scupping teacher.” “Teacher” was a generic
term for the residents, and nothing that the settlement had contributed
to the life of the neighborhood impressed the children as had the
playground. It is worth reminding those who are associated with young
people that the power to influence is given to those who play with,
rather than to those who only teach, them. Our children on the East Side
are not peculiar in this respect. To this day I receive letters from men
and women who try to recall themselves to my memory by saying that they
once played in our back yard.
[Illustration]
An organized propaganda for outdoor gymnasia and playgrounds crystallized
in 1898 in the formation of the Outdoor Recreation League, in which the
settlement participated. The tireless president of the League eventually
succeeded in obtaining the use of a large space in our neighborhood,
originally purchased by the city, during a brief reform administration,
for a park. Some very undesirable tenement houses had been destroyed,
and when a Tammany administration returned to power a hot summer was
allowed to pass with nothing done to accomplish the original purpose.
Unsightly holes, once cellars, remained to fill with stagnant water,
amputated sewer- and gas-pipes were exposed, and among these the children
played mimic battles of the Spanish-American War, then in progress.
The accident that the Commissioner of Health, a semi-invalid, felt
gratitude to a trained nurse who had cared for him, gave me an
opportunity to approach him on the subject. He promised (and he kept his
promise) to use his influence to get an appropriation on the score of
the menace to the health of the city. The appropriation was sufficient
to fill in the space and surround it with a fence, and the Outdoor
Recreation League was able to demonstrate the value of playgrounds.
In 1902 the Board of Estimate and Apportionment of Mayor Seth Low’s
reform administration, at its first meeting, appropriated money for the
equipment and maintenance of Seward Park, as it was named,—the first
municipal playground in New York City. So much interest had been aroused
in this phase of city government that two city officials left the board
meeting while it was in progress to telephone to the settlement that the
appropriation had been passed.
Many friends of the children combined to urge the use of the public
schools as recreation centers, and in the summer of 1898 the first
schools were opened for that purpose. Those of us who had practical
experience helped to start these by acting as volunteer inspectors.
The settlement then felt justified in devoting less effort to its own
playground, and deflected some of the energies it required to meet other
pressing needs.
* * * * *
It is a delight to give the children stories from the Bible and the old
mythologies, fairy tales, and lives of heroes, and we mark as epochal
Maude Adams’s inspiration to invite our children and others not likely to
have the opportunity to see Peter Pan. She has given joy to thousands,
but it is doubtful if she can measure, as we do, the influence of “the
everlasting boy.” Through him romance has touched these children, and not
a few of the letters spontaneously written to Peter Pan from tenement
homes have seemed to us not unworthy of Barrie himself. Protest against
leaving the big, familiar farmhouse at one of our country places, when
an overflow of visitors necessitated a division of the little ones at
night, was immediately withdrawn when the children were told that the
annex, perched on high ground, was a “Wendy House.”
[Illustration]
The need of care for convalescents was early recognized, and the
settlement’s first country house was for them. It was opened in 1899,
and its maintenance is the generous gift of a young woman, a member of
the early group that gathered in the Henry Street house. We soon felt,
however, that it was essential that children and young people as well as
invalids should have knowledge of life other than that of the crowded
tenement and factory; and from the time of the establishment of our first
kindergarten we longed to have the children know the reality of the
things they sang about, the birds and animals which so often formed the
subject of their games. A little girl in one of the parties taken to see
Peter Pan turned to her beloved club leader when the crocodile appeared
and asked timidly if it was a _field-mouse_! A recent lesson had been
about that “animal.” It seems almost incredible that the description,
probably supplemented by a picture, should not have made a more definite
impression upon the child’s mind; but I am inclined to think that little
children can form no accurate conception of unknown objects from pictures
or description. A neighborhood teacher took her class to the menagerie
in Central Park just after a lesson on the cow and its “gifts”—milk,
cream, butter. She hoped that the young buffalo’s resemblance to the cow
might suggest itself to the children who, of course, had never seen a
cow. In answer to her question an eager little boy gave testimony to the
impression the lesson had made on his mind when he answered, “Yes, ma’am.
I know it. It’s a _butterfly_.”
[Illustration]
We value the “day parties” for incidental education as well as for the
pleasure they afford. Each year as spring approaches a census is taken
of the surrounding blocks, that the new arrivals may be included in the
excursions. The most treasured invitations for these parties come from
friends whose country estates are near enough to offer hospitality,
and to whose gardens and stables the children are taken. The larger
parties, composed of women and children, usually go to the seashore in
chartered cars, and these excursions, purely recreative, compete, and not
unsuccessfully, with the clam-bakes and outings of the old-time political
leaders.
[Illustration: THE KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN LEARN THE REALITY OF THE THINGS
THEY SING ABOUT]
The beautiful country places presented to the settlement for vacation
purposes, and the comparative readiness with which money for equipment
and maintenance for non-paying guests has been given, indicates the
favor with which this development of neighborhood work is regarded.
Opportunities for confidence and mutual understanding, not always
possible in the formal relationships of clubs and classes, are afforded
by the intimacy of country-house parties. The possibility of giving
direction at critical periods of character-formation, particularly
during adolescence, and of discovering clews to deep-lying causes of
disturbance, makes the country life a valuable extension of the organized
social work of the settlement. “Riverholm,” overhanging the Hudson; “Camp
Henry,” on a beautiful lake; the “House in the Woods,” “Echo Hill Farm,”
and a commodious house in New Jersey, lent by friends during the summer
months, give us the means whereby some of the plans we cherish may be
carried out.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: “House in the Woods.”]
It would be inconsistent with settlement theories if these country
places did not express refinement and beauty,—the beauty that belongs
to simplicity,—not only in the buildings, but also in the service and
housekeeping. It has seemed to us, therefore, worth the additional
expenditure of effort to have small, distinct household units wherever
practicable. People who live in crowded homes, walk on crowded streets,
ride on crowded cars, and as children attend crowded classrooms,
must inevitably acquire distorted views of life; and the settlement
is reluctant to add to these the experience of crowded country life.
Valuable training in housekeeping is possible in a household even of
from fifteen to twenty-five persons,—a small unit according to New York
standards,—and tactful direction can often be given toward acquiring
those manners generally recognized as “good.” Many of the children who
come to us know only foreign customs and foreign table-manners; and the
extreme difficulty of maintaining orderly home life in the tenement
makes it important to supplement the home-training or to supply what
it can never give. Indeed, we recognize in this desire to protect our
children from being marked as peculiar or alien because of non-essential
differences the same reason that urges the careful mother to insist on
“manners,” that her children may not be discredited when they mingle with
the fastidious.
[Illustration]
The ideal of limitation as to numbers cannot always be carried out,
and naturally it does not apply to the camp, where a freer and less
conventional life attracts and satisfies boys and young men.
The older members of the settlement, who are earning money, use the camp
and country places as clubs, paying for the privilege and conforming to
the regulations which they have had a share in establishing.
[Illustration]
Those who have promoted the various Fresh-Air agencies throughout the
country may not realize that physical benefit is not all that has been
secured. We are persuaded that opportunity to know life away from the
city is in part the explanation of the increasing number of city boys
who elect training in agriculture and forestry. Formerly, when careers
were discussed, the future held no happiness unless it promised a
profession—law or medicine.
If I appear to lay too much stress upon the importance of play and
recreation, it may be well to point out that it is one way of recognizing
the dignity of the child. The study of juvenile delinquency shows how
often the young offender’s presence in the courts may be traced to a
play-impulse for which there was no safe outlet.
Perhaps nothing more definitely indicates the changed attitude toward
children and play than the fact that last summer (1914) the police
officers of the precinct called to enlist our co-operation in carrying
out the orders of the city administration that during certain hours of
the day traffic was to be shut off from designated streets, that the
children might play there. The visit brought to mind years of painstaking
effort to secure the toleration of harmless play, and the hope we
had dared to express, despite incredulity on the part of the police,
that some day the children might come to regard them as guardians and
protectors, rather than as a fear-inspiring and hated force. One captain
of the precinct, at least, had proved the practicability of our theory,
and when he was transferred we lost a valuable co-worker. The Governor
of New York, campaigning for re-election in the fall of this year (1914),
advocated that public schools should be surrounded by playgrounds at “no
matter what cost.”
Tremendous impetus has been given to the playground movement throughout
the entire country by individuals and societies organized for the
purpose. Wise men and women have expounded the social philosophy of play
and recreation, pointing out that these may afford wholesome expression
for energies which might otherwise be diverted into channels disastrous
to peace and happiness; that clean sport and stimulating competition
can replace the gang feud and even modify racial antagonisms. The most
satisfactory evidence of this conviction is, of course, the recognition
of the child’s right to play, as an integral part of his claim upon the
state.
[Illustration]