In fact, for some games the only adverse
criticism to offer is that they are more of a discipline than real play,
and that certainly for younger children who have no other form of
recreation than play, something more restful to the mind and less
definite in purpose is desirable.
For these during playtime some semblance of solitude is exceedingly
desirable at school where the great want is to be sometimes alone. It is
good for them not to be always under the pressure of competition--going
along a made road to a definite end--but to have their little moments of
even comparative solitude, little times of silence and complete freedom,
if they cannot be by themselves. Hoops and skipping-ropes without races
or counted competitions will give this, with the possibility of a moment
or two to do nothing but live and breathe and rejoice in air and
sunshine. Without these moments of rest the conditions of life at
present and the constitutions for which the new word "nervy" has had to
be invented, will give us tempers and temperaments incapable of repose
and solitude. A child alone in a swing, kicking itself backwards and
forwards, is at rest; alone in its little garden it has complete rest of
mind with the joy of seeing its own plants grow; alone in a field
picking wild flowers it is as near to the heart of primitive existence
as it is possible to be.
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