One of the things we grown-ups do for children that has been rather severely criticized is the lavishing upon them of toys,—intricate and costly toys. "What, as a child, I used to pretend the toys I had, were, the toys my children have now, are!" an acquaintance of mine was saying to me recently. "For instance," she went on, "I had a box with a hole in one end of it; I used to pretend that it was a camera, and pretend to take pictures with it! I cannot imagine my children doing that! They have real cameras and take real pictures."
The camera would seem to be typical of the toys we give to the children of to-day; they can do something with it,—something real.
The dearest treasure of my childhood was a tiny gold locket, shaped, and even engraved, like a watch. Not long ago I was showing it to a little girl who lives in New York. "I used to pretend it was a watch," I said; "I used to pretend telling the time by it."
She gazed at it with interested eyes. "It is very nice," she observed politely; "but wouldn't you have liked to have a real watch? I have one; and I really tell the time by it."
"But you cannot pretend with it!" I found myself saying.
"Oh, yes, I can," the little girl exclaimed in surprise; "and I do! I hang it on the cupola of my dolls' house and pretend that it is the clock in the Metropolitan Tower!"
The alarmists warn us that what we do for the children in the direction of costly and complicated toys may, even while helping them do something for themselves, mar their priceless simplicity. Need we fear this? Is it not likely that the "real" watches which we give them that they may "really" tell time, will be used, also, for more than one of the other simple purposes of childhood?
The English woman said that we Americans did so much, so very much, for the children of our nation. There have been other foreigners who asserted that we did too much. Indubitably, we do a great deal. But, since we do it all that the children may learn to do, and, through doing, to be, can we ever possibly do too much? "It is possible to converse with any American on the American child," the English woman said. Certainly every American has something to say on that subject, because every American is trying to do something for some American child, or group of children, to do much, very much.