"Girls, as well as boys, play with dogs in these days!" is another plaintive cry we often hear. But were there ever days when this was not the case? From that far-off day when Iseult "had always a little brachet with her that Tristram gave her the first time that ever she came into Cornwell," to the time when Dora cuddled Jip, even down to our own day, when the heroine of "Queed" walks forth with her Behemoth, girls both in fact and in fiction have played with dogs; played with them no less than boys. This proclivity on the part of the little girls of our Nation is not distinctively American, nor especially childish, nor particularly girl-like; it is merely human.
In few activities do the children of our Nation reveal what we call the "American sense of humor" so clearly as in their play. Slight ills, and even serious misfortunes, they instinctively endeavor to lift and carry with a laugh. It would be difficult to surpass the gay heroism to which they sometimes attain.
Most of us remember the little hunchbacked boy in "Little Men" who, when the children played "menagerie," chose the part of the dromedary. "Because," he explained, "I have a hump on my back!"
Among my acquaintances there is a little girl who is blind. One day I invited her to go picnicking with a party of normal children, one of whom was her elder sister. She was accustomed to the company of children who could see, and she showed a ready disposition to join in the games of the other picnickers. Her sister stayed close beside her and guarded and guided her.
"Let's play blind man's buff," one of the children heedlessly suggested after a long course of "drop-the-handkerchief."
The other children with seeing eyes instantly looked at the child who was sightless, and whispered, "Ssh! You'll hurt her feelings!"
But the little blind girl scrambled eagerly to her feet. "Yes," she said, brightly; "let's play blind man's buff! I can be 'It' all the time!"
There is a phrase that has been very widely adopted by Americans. Scarcely one of us but uses it—"playing the game." Our highest commendation of a man or a woman has come to be, "He plays the game," or "She plays the game." Another phrase, often upon our lips, is "according to the rules of the game." We Americans talk of the most sacred things of life in the vocabulary of children at play. May not this be because the children of our Nation play so well; so much better than we grown- ups do anything?