Choose his toys wisely and then leave
him alone with them. Leave him to the throng of emotional impressions
they will call into being. Remember that they speak to his feelings
when his mind is not yet open to reason. The toy at this period is
surrounded with a halo of poetry and mystery, and lays hold of the
imagination and the heart without awaking vulgar curiosity. Thrice
happy age when one can hug one's white woolly lamb to one's bibbed
breast, kiss its pink bead eyes in irrational ecstasy, and manipulate
the squeak in its foreground without desire to explore the cause
thereof!
At this period the well-beloved toy, the dumb sharer of the child's
joys and sorrows, becomes the nucleus of a thousand enterprises, each
rendered more fascinating by its presence and sympathy. If the toy be
a horse, they take imaginary journeys together, and the road is doubly
delightful because never traveled alone. If it be a house, the child
lives therein a different life for every day in the week; for
no monarch alive is so all-powerful as he whose throne is the
imagination.
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