must appeal not to this or that sense, nor to this or that salient trait in a child's character, we must go straight to the little child pure and simple that lies hidden, fresh and clean, deep under the Bermondsey crust. We must try to win the children's love.

The Guild of Play provides just such an opportunity for this personal influence.

It is a glorious thing to give children happy hours, but if at the same time we can help to make life— ordinary, hungry, toyless life-beautiful and good to them, if we can help the tiny seeds of love and faith and hope and self-control to grow, if we can lure forth ideals, surely that is true education.

The Demonstration then commenced.

As the doors of the Lecture Hall opened fifty little girls dressed in old-fashioned, high-waisted, blue cotton frocks, and quaint blue caps, came dancing in two-andtwo with uplifted hands and tripping steps to some old dance measure.

'Sit,' came the word, and instantly fifty pairs of legs were lost to view.

From their brisk order and quaint unstudied gestures one would hardly have suspected that these children represented one of the poorest waterside schools. Many of them had been chosen by the teachers for the free School Board dinners during the previous winter; many have but one room to call home.

When the clapping ceased the children rose to begin a somewhat random programme, largely chosen by themselves, after serious talks about the likings of 'grand lidies;' and culled from Mrs. Alice B. Gomme's collection of singing-games.

It will be seen that the traditional element in the

J.A. Moole.

games has a distinct value, and that as children's workers we should gladly clinch all links that may bind the present to the future and the past.

'London Bridge is broken down' is perhaps the most popular of all the song-games, and with it we began. We live in the world of docks, and the building-if not the holding-of bridges is an ever-present allegory. Knowing the old legend of the foundation sacrifices, even the children felt the grim humour of the situation when the nodding caps almost touched each other as their little wearers curtseyed to my fair lady.'

When my fair lady' was safely in prison, the long lines melted into circles, which whirled round to the strains of Here we come looby loo,' a game obviously a survival of the old antic dances when every animal was a little brother, and every tree the haunted home of some one too big for houses.

After a moment's gasp for breath came an ancient, dramatic rendering of a funeral, the sequel to the woes of Poor Jenny Jones,' who, hidden from her many suitors behind her mother's widespread apron, which was starched and washed and ironed, sickened and now lies dead. The serious, matronly ways of the tiny 'Jennies' never fail to make a strange appeal.

'Old Roger' is another great favourite. To quote Mrs. Gomme :

'The interest of the game, is that it is not merely representative of a funeral, but more particularly shows the belief that a dead person is cognisant of actions done by the living, and capable of resenting personal wrongs and desecration of the grave; it shows also the sacredness of the grave.

'It shows clearly a survival of the method of portray

ing old plays, the ring of children act the part of chorus, and relate the incidents of the play. The three actors say nothing, but only act their several parts in dumb show. A raising and lowering of the arms on the part of the child who plays "apple tree," the quiet of “Old Roger" until he has to jump up, certainly shows the early method of actors when details were presented by action instead of words. Children see no absurdity in being a tree, or a wall, or an animal. They simply are these things if the game or the play demands it, and consequently they think nothing of incongruities. It is not, of course, suggested that children have preserved in this game an old play, but that in this and similar games they have preserved traditional methods of acting and detail, as shown in an early and childish period of the drama. All will remember how Shakespeare uses the same idea in "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

After sundry similar games, the programme ended with 'Oats and Beans and Barley,' the old farming game which had its origin in the feasting, dancing, and courting at Harvest Festivals long ago. For days afterwards we were haunted by its lilting chorus:

Do you, or I, or anyone know

How oats and beans and barley grow?

Then, two by two, with dainty tripping steps, the children went away, as they had come.

If we may judge from their faces, the audience shared with us the thought now deepened into a conviction that children's education must begin with their play.'

SISTER GRACE.

E. B. TAYLOR. Bermondsey Settlement, S.E.