selves: if the winds come upon it in force, they scatter its parts and strew them here and there; or if the sun strikes it with its scorching breath, it destroys it in the cradle, before it has opened to life, before its heart has seen the light so as to beat with life and delight in happiness. But this flower sprouts and grows, in other people's lands, under the care of every watchful eye and in the shade of every sheltering wing — and their land is not so fertile as ours, nor is there in their sun and their breeze the warmth and life that are in our soil and its air. Why, then, does our flower come up with withering and misery in its eye, while in their roses there is vitality and gladness? Their children are happy, and our children are wretched.

And here I do not mean the small minority of rich children, but the children of the nation as a whole — the children of common folk and notables alike. Come with me, my dear lady reader, to cast a passing glance at some of the human care that surrounds their child, and set against it the denial and indifference that surround ours!...

I searched in different regions of Europe — in its north, in Sweden and Denmark; in its west, in London; in its center, in France and Switzerland; and in its south, in Italy — I searched in all these regions for a child lying wrapped in the earth, with insects and dirt nesting on him, and I did not find him there. I found instead the homes and playgrounds built especially for him and for his future. Let us enter Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens in London, or the Luxembourg in Paris, or the other public gardens in other cities and countries: we see that most of the visitors to

these gardens — especially on sunny days — are children in the company of their parents or their nurses, playing on the green grass and frolicking, filling the world with a chirping beyond the chirping of sparrows and a gaiety beyond the gaiety of flowers. Over there a group is playing with a little dog, racing against him, and the grand prize is a piece of candy for the dog — or for the child — whichever is the lucky one with the swift legs. In another corner a number of them, charmed by the water, have set about sailing their little boats with white sails, or their swift steam-driven ones; and how happy is he whose boat comes in ahead of the other, as though his own personal charm had hastened the sail's course and the push of the wind behind it. Those are gardens all their own, holding every means of amusement and profit together. In one corner of Kensington, for instance, is a small garden with some livestock of various kinds; the children busy themselves offering grass, or a share of the cakes and sweets they carry, to these tame animals and their young — and so the little one learns much about them, and about kindness to animals, from his tenderest years, just as he grows up brave and comes to understand that what you do not harm will not harm you...

And how often you see grandfa-thers reclining on special chairs in the spacious public gardens, and around them ripe human blossoms bent over something you cannot make out until you draw near: a great book full of attractive colored pictures, and behind those pictures meanings and lessons that refine the child and polish his character, prepar-ing him for manhood and for the homeland even as they amuse

and delight him. Where, then, are the books for children among us? And where are the libraries set apart for them, founded in other people's countries especially for their sake, containing — besides hundreds of books suited to every sex and every age — assorted pictures, and appointed hours for showing certain motion pictures on many cultural subjects, which at the same time do not lack the element of amusement!!...

And suddenly the air carries to you a heavenly music rising from those earnest little groups who have taken reading for their pastime. How beautiful a music it is, issuing from small, pure hearts! And how the visitor to some museum, or to some concert hall, marvels when he finds a mother accompanying her children, standing with them long enough before the various works of art, showing them the points of art and beauty in them in a language and a manner they can grasp and comprehend — and how lovely the children are, held fast by the magic of melody, every feature of their faces bespeaking an effort to under-stand, and delight. Can such children as these ever know, from earliest childhood, the meaning of misery and the black face of life? Why, then, do we not prepare for our children such instructive and amusing things? Why do we deprive them of public gardens and parks of their own, of the libraries and museums set apart for them, only to fling them into the streets, onto the edges of the roads, and among the dirt? Why do we not provide them with games and ways of passing the time other than clambering up the sides of the tramcars, exposing their souls to death, their bodies to amputation and disfigurement, and their spirits to crime? Are