246 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
away from you by empty-handed love. The 
gorgeous toys will dazzle them for an hour ; 
then their instincts will revert to their natural 
friends. In visiting a house where there are 
children I do not like to take them presents : 
it is better to forego the pleasure of the giving 
than to divide the welcome between yourself 
and the gift. Let that follow after you are 
gone. 
It is an exaggerated compliment to women 
when we ascribe to them alone this natural 
sympathy with childhood. It is an individual, 
not a sexual trait, and is stronger in many men 
than in many women. It is nowhere better ex- 
hibited in literature than where the happy Wil- 
helm Meister takes his boy by the hand, to lead 
him “into the free and lordly world.” Such 
love is not universal among the other sex, 
though men, in that humility which so adorns 
their natures, keep up the pleasing fiction that 
it iss As a general rule, any little girl feels 
some glimmerings of emotion towards anything 
that can pass for a doll, but it does not follow 
that, when grown older, she will feel as ready 
an instinct toward every child. Try it. Point 
out to a woman some bundle of blue-and-white 
or white-and-scarlet in some one’s arms at the 
next street corner. Ask her, “Do you love 
that baby?” Not one woman in three will say 
