course, the expenses in raw material were greatly diminished by the
illicit acquisition of Mrs. Glover's property, and in this way she had
unconsciously provided the neighborhood with a navy and a commander.
Her first instinct, after becoming acquainted with the whole story,
was to present the boy with a real boat, but on second thought she
collected and gave him a number of old envelopes with names and
addresses upon them, which added greatly to the excitement of the
sailing, because they could be more easily identified as they came out
of the other end of the tunnel, and had their respective reputations
as to speed.

Here is indeed food for romance, and I give both instances to prove
that the advantages of street life are to be taken into consideration
as well as the disadvantages, though I think we are bound to admit
that the latter outweigh the former.

One of the immediate results of dramatic stories is the escape from the
commonplace, to which I have already alluded in quoting Mr. Goschen's
words. The desire for this escape is a healthy one, common to adults
and children. When we wish to get away from our own surroundings and
interests, we do for ourselves what I maintain we ought to do for
children: we step into the land of fiction. It has always been a source
of astonishment to me that, in trying to escape from our own everyday
surroundings, we do not step more boldly into the land of pure romance,
which would form a real contrast to our everyday life, but, in nine
cases out of ten, the fiction which is sought after deals with the
subjects of our ordinary existence, namely, frenzied finance, sordid
poverty, political corruption, fast society, and religious doubts.

There is the same danger in the selection of fiction for children: