Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

[264]

LII. the discipline of dolls.

It is a very instructive fact that two of the best mothers I know-and mothers, it must be added, on the largest scale — have had their preliminary training solely through the charge of dolls. I visited lately the nursery of one of these mothers, arranged as the collective play-room of six children under ten--there being also three older offspring who have graduated from this play-room, and are in a manner launched into the world outside. In this room everything is provided by wholesale-whole freight-trains of toy-wagons, wooden horses enough for all to ride at once, and four hundred blocks for purposes of architecture. Here the six play perpetually together while they are in-doors; and when peace is interrupted by discord, and there is a momentary tendency among the younger members to pull each other's hair-hair, it must be said, so curly that it seems almost a waste of the blessings of Providence not to pull it occasionally-the tranquil mother, wisely remembering that most of the ill-temper of children comes from the stomach,