And if the juvenile mind were capable of self-analysis it would reject them. I learned this first from a little girl of three years. She had been deluged with presents that Christmas morning; but before an hour had passed she had looked them all over, and we found her curled up in an armchair, playing with a clothes-pin and an empty baking-powder can! Hers was the happiness found only in the land of Make-Believe. Instead of giving my boy a soldier outfit, I would give him a pocket-knife--assuming that he is old enough to wield one. Having a new knife, he is ambitious to use it, and he fashions a sword out of a stick of pine. The sword suggests playing soldier, and he proceeds to make a peaked hat out of a newspaper; a skate-strap answers for a belt, and he makes a pair of epaulets from a scrap of tin-foil. In this way the boy is duly benefited: in creating these things his ingenuity is drawn upon, and, in supplying things that he cannot make, his imagination is exercised. One can hardly begin too early to teach the child the pleasure of giving. A few pennies taken by him from his own little bank, and an excursion to a neighbouring store, will initiate the idea. A mere trinket for each member of the household will serve the purpose and put him on the right track. But we must go further than the family circle with the Christmas idea. We must show the boy that while charity begins at home, it does not end there. One day shortly before Christmas, I took the boy to the closet where his discarded toys were kept, and I said: “There are millions of children in the world, and there are not always toys enough to go around. If you will tell me which of these things you do not play with any more, I will see that they are distributed on Christmas Day among little boys and girls who otherwise would get nothing.” He looked the things over carefully, and said finally that there was nothing that he would like to give away. I did not urge the matter; but the next day I invited him to take a ride with me on the street-car. Alighting at City Hall Park, we walked down the Bowery. Arriving at Pell Street, I found Chuck Connors sunning himself on the corner. “Chuck,” I said, “I have a dollar in my pocket that isn’t busy, and I want you to take me to some one who needs it more than you or me.”