"'T was brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe."
As I went back to the house, bearing my findings, I met my little boy
friend. He tried not to see what I carried.
"I gathered these from the apple trees," I said, holding out the verses.
"They are poems."
He made no motion to take the "poems." His eyes danced. But neither then
did he say nor since has he said that the verses were his; that he was
the Orlando who had caused them to grow upon the trees.
Another child of my acquaintance, a little girl, I discovered in an even
sweeter game for "playing alone." She chanced to call upon me one
afternoon just as I was taking from its wrappings an _édition de luxe_
of "Pippa Passes." Her joy in the exquisite illustrations with which the
book was embellished even exceeded mine.
"Is the story in the book as lovely as the pictures?" she queried.
"Yes," I assured her.
Then, at her urgent request, I told her the tale of the "little black-
eyed pretty singing Felippa"; of her "single day," and of her singing
that "righted all again" on that holiday in Asolo.
The child was silent for a moment after I had finished the story. "Do
you like it?" I inquired.
"Um--yes," she mused. "Let me look at the pictures some more," she
asked, with sudden eagerness.
I handed her the book, and she pored over it for a long time. "The
houses then were not like the houses now--were they?" she said; "and the
people dressed in funny clothes."
The next Saturday, at an early hour, I heard beneath my window a
childish voice singing a kindergarten song. I peeped out. There stood my
little friend. I was careful to make no sound and to keep well in the
shadow. The small girl finished her song, and softly ran away.
"Your little girl serenaded me the other morning," I said to her mother
when I saw her a few days afterward. The child had shown so slight an
interest in anything in my book except the pictures that I did not yet
connect her singing with it.
"You, too!" exclaimed the little girl's mother. "She evidently serenaded
the entire neighborhood! All day Saturday, her only holiday, she went
around, singing under various windows! I wonder what put the idea into
her head."
"Did you ask her?" I questioned, with much curiosity.
"Yes," answered the child's mother; "but she only smiled, and looked
embarrassed, so I said nothing further. She seemed to want to keep her
secret, the dear baby! So I thought I'd let her!"
And I--I, too, kept it. "Yes, do let her," was all I said.
American children, when "playing alone," impersonate the heroes and
heroines of the dramas they see, or the stories they are told, or the
books they read (how much more often they must do it than we suspect our
memories of our own childish days will teach us), but when they play
together, even when they "play at books that they have read," they
seldom "pretend." A group of small boys who have just read "Robin Hood"
do not say: "Wouldn't it be fun to play that _we_ are Robin Hood and his
Merry Men, and that our grove is Sherwood Forest?" They are more apt to
say: "It would be good sport for _us_--shooting with bows and arrows. We
might get some, and fix up a target somewhere and practise." The circle
of little girls who have read "Mary's Meadow" do not propose that they
play at being Mary. They decide instead upon doing, in their own proper
persons, what Mary did in hers. They can play together, the children of
our Nation, but they seem unable to "pretend" together. They are perhaps
too self-conscious.
It is a significant circumstance that yearly there are published in
America a large number of books for children telling them "how to make"
various things. A great part of their play consists in making something
--from a sunken garden to an air-ship.
I recently had a letter from a boy in which he said: "The boys here are
getting wireless sets. We have to buy part of the things; but we make as
many of them as we can."
And how assiduously they attempt to make as many as they can of the
other things we grown-ups make! They imitate our play; and, in a spirit
of play, they contrive to copy to its last and least detail our work. If
we play golf or tennis, they also play these games. Are we painters of
pictures or writers of books, they too aspire to paint or to write!
It cannot be denied that we encourage the children in this "endless
imitation." We not only have diminutive golf sticks and tennis rackets
manufactured for their use as soon as they would play our games; when
they show signs of toying with our work, we promptly set about providing
them with the proper means to that end.
One of our best-known magazines for children devotes every month a
considerable number of its pages to stories and poems and drawings
contributed by children. Furthermore, it offers even such rewards as we
grown-up writers and painters are offered for "available" products.
Moreover, the young contributors are instructed in the intricacies of
literary and artistic etiquette. They are taught how to prepare
manuscripts and drawings for the editorial eye. The "rules" given these
children are identical with the regulations governing well-conducted
grown-up writers and artists--excepting that the children are commanded
to "state age," and "have the contribution submitted indorsed as wholly
original!"
It is a noteworthy fact that hundreds of children in America send in
contributions, month after month, year after year, to this magazine.
Even more significant is it that they prepare these contributions with
all the conscientious care of grown-up writers or painters to whom
writing or painting is the chiefest reality of life. So whole-heartedly
do the children play at being what their elders are!
[Illustration: THE DEAR DELIGHTS OF PLAYING ALONE]
An Italian woman once asked me, "The American children--what do they
employ as toys?"