generations yet unborn the capacity for wonder, the power to take a
large unselfish interest in the spectacle of things, and putting them
forever at the mercy of small private cares.

"A nursery rhyme is the most sane, the most unselfish thing in the
world. It calls up some delightful image--a little nut-tree with a
silver walnut and a golden pear; some romantic adventure only for the
child's delight and liberation from the bondage of unseeing dullness:
it brings before the mind the quintessence of some good thing:

"'The little dog laughed to see such sport'--there is the soul of
good humor, of sanity, of health in the laughter of that innocently
wicked little dog. It is the laughter of pure frolic without
unkindness. To have laughed with the little dog as a child is the
best preservative against mirthless laughter in later years--the
horse laughter of brutality, the ugly laughter of spite, the acrid
laughter of fanaticism. The world of nursery rhymes, the old world of
Mrs. Slipper-Slopper, is the world of natural things, of quick,
healthy motion, of the joy of living.

"In nursery rhymes the child is entertained with all the pageant of
the world. It walks in fairy gardens, and for it the singing birds
pass. All the King's horses and all the King's men pass before it in
their glorious array. Craftsmen of all sorts, bakers, confectioners,
silversmiths, blacksmiths are busy for it with all their arts and
mysteries, as at the court of an eastern King."

In insisting upon the value of this escape from the commonplace, I
cannot prove the importance of it more clearly than by showing what
may happen to a child who is deprived of his birthright by having none