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larger ones are steep paths leading up mountain sides. 
Great chasms yawn beneath you. Here only the dar- 
ing, the cool-headed, may hope to be successful and 
reach the highest points without danger to their bones. 
Out here the girls bring their dolls, and play house. 
Nothing can make a more interesting or a more surpris- 
ing house than an apple tree, its rooms are so many and 
of such curious shapes. Then, too, the seats in these 
rooms are far more comfortable than the chairs used 
by ordinary people in everyday houses. The doings of 
the Robin family are overlooked by its windows. One 
is amazed to see how many fat worms Mother Robin 
manages to pop down the yawning baby throats, and 
wonders how baby robins ever live to grow up. 
From these windows you watch the first flying lesson ; 
and you laugh to see the little cowards cling to the 
branch close by, paying little heed to their parents’ 
noisy indignation. All the same, you wish that you 
too might suddenly grow a pair of wings, and join the 
little class, and learn to do the one thing that seems 
even more delightful than tree climbing. 
That you children long to be out of the schoolroom 
this minute, out in the orchard so full of possibilities, I 
do not wonder a bit. But as the big people have 
decided that from now on for some months you must 
spend much of your time with lesson books, I have a 
plan to propose. | 
What do you say to trying to bring something of the 
outdoor places that we love into the schoolroom, which 
we do not love as much as we should if lessons were 
always taught in the right way? 
