STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 579 



The essence of play is the realizing of an imaginary situation 

 or action ; it is thus in a sense dramatic ; only that the child's 

 drama, like M. Jourdain's prose, is unconscious. In this impulse 

 to be something, the actual external surroundings play a greater 

 or less part according to the needs of the player. Sometimes there 

 is scarcely any adjustment of the actual objects and scene ; the 

 child plays out its action with purely imaginary surroundings, 

 including companions or playmates. Thus one mother writes of 

 her boy, aged two years and a half : " He amuses himself by pre- 

 tending things. He will fetch an imaginary cake from a corner, 

 rake -together imaginary grass, or fight a battle with imaginary 

 soldiers." As a recent little work shows,* some children have 

 adopted permanently an invisible playmate. In such vivid real- 

 ization the utmost interference with actual surroundings that is 

 needed is change of place. Here is a pretty example of this sim- 

 ple imaginative play. A child of twenty months, who was ac- 

 customed to meet a bonne and child in the Jardin du Luxembourg, 

 suddenly leaves the family living room, pronouncing indifferently 

 well the names " Luxembourg/' " bonne," and " enfant." He goes 

 into the next room, pretends to say " good day " to his two out- 

 door acquaintances, and then returns and narrates what he has 

 been doing, f Here the simple act of passing into an adjoining 

 room was enough to secure the needed realization of the encounter 

 in the garden. The movement into the next room is suggestive. 

 Primarily it meant, no doubt, that it was the child's way of realiz- 

 ing the out-of-door walk ; yet I suspect that there was another 

 motive at work. Children love to enact their little play-scenes 

 in some remote spot, withdrawn from notice, where imagination 

 suffers no let from the intrusion of mother, nurse, or other mem- 

 ber of the real environment. How many a thrilling, exciting play 

 has been carried out in a corner, especially if it be dark, or, better 

 still, screened off ! The fascination of curtained spaces, as those 

 behind the window curtains, under the table with the tablecloth 

 hanging low, will be fresh in the memory of all who can recall 

 their childhood. 



A step toward a more realistic kind of play-action, in which, 

 as in the modern theater, imagination is propped up by strong 

 scenic effects, is taken when a scene is constructed, the chairs and 

 sofa turned into ships, carriages, a railway train, and so forth. 



Yet, after all, the scene is but a very subordinate part of this 

 infantile play. Next to itself proudly enjoying the part of the 

 rider, the soldier, the engine-driver, or what not, the child wants 



* The Invisible Playmate, by Canton. London, Isbister ; pp. 33 and following, 

 f Egger, quoted by Compayre, L'Evolution intellectuelle et morale de 1'Enfant, pp. 

 149, 150. 



