A SHADOW 239 
that the greater part of the baby-life should be 
that of an animated toy. 
Perhaps it is well for all of us that we should 
live mostly on the surfaces of things and should 
play with life, to avoid taking it too hard. In 
a nursery the youngest child is a little more 
than a doll, and the doll is a little less than a 
child. What spell does fancy weave on earth 
like that which the one of these small beings 
performs for the other? This battered and tat- 
tered doll, this shapeless, featureless, possibly 
legless creature, whose mission it is to be 
dragged by one arm, or stood upon its head in 
the bathing-tub, until it finally reverts to the 
rag-bag whence it came, — what an affluence of 
breathing life is thrown around it by one touch 
of dawning imagination! Its little mistress will 
find all joy unavailing without its sympathetic 
presence, will confide every emotion to its pen- 
and-ink ears, and will weep passionate tears if 
its extremely soiled person is pricked when its 
clothes are mended. What psychologist, what 
student of the human heart, has ever applied 
his subtile analysis to the emotions of a child 
toward her doll? 
I read lately the charming autobiography of 
a little girl of eight years, written literally from 
her own dictation. Since “Pet Marjorie” I 
have seen no such actual self-revelation on the 
