The utter childlikeness of this playlet is one of its chief charms. Any one may play it—it is not copyrighted. And if it may seem forbiddingly dark in tone, perhaps in spite of the empurpled tragedies of its ending, the pang will be turned to joy when the king and the princess arise promptly from the ground and assume their proper character as father and little daughter amid the wild plaudits of the audience, consisting probably of mother only.
Nothing can be better for the children than to engage them in the making of little plays such as this. There are now many books of plays for children and young people. Of course there are not enough. There should be one hundred where there is now but one. If all the young people would go to work devising plays we would soon have more; and plays made by themselves for themselves would be better for their use than any others could ever be.
Where the life of the sixteen-year-old daughter in the home may become most useful may perhaps consist in getting the parents and the children to join her in carrying through the great endeavor of presenting a play, some winter afternoon in the kitchen, for their own delectation and education. It is easy to imagine the whole family, including the father, whatever his age may be, taking part in a play; and if the father finds it hard work to fall down dead at the proper minute, it is good enough for him for allowing himself to grow so stiff! And if he finds it difficult to feel at home in a helmet of pasteboard trimmed with gilt paper and decorated with dust-brush plumes, he may remember that he is ridiculous in his own eyes only, not in those of the enraptured boy and girl who are fellow actors with him.
An unfailing source of good plots is always at hand in the Bible; and no better way to impress these stories upon the memory could be found than by turning the incidents into little plays and tableaux for the family to show. The Sabbath School lesson could be metamorphosed into a joy and the symbolisms of Christmas and Easter could be made a reality by the legitimate use of the dramatic instinct that is innate in all of us.
A form of art akin to the play is the moving picture. This source of amusement and of education is within the reach of every country community that has learned the secret of joining hands. The men and especially the women of the community should be invariably present and should instantly and firmly object to any film that seems to them harmful. This being provided, the young people are safe and may have the pleasure and instruction that come from seeing displayed the clean, adventurous story, the doings of other lands and of historic events long past.
CHAPTER XXVI
PAGEANTRY AS A COMMUNITY RESOURCE
Truth is eternal, but her effluence,
With endless change, is fitted to the hour;
Her mirror is turned forward, to reflect
The promise of the future, not the past.
—Lowell.