often bring about such mental eunuchoidismus, but it is probable that the great majority of those thus sterilized would have been dead-wood in the stream of evolutionary progress had they been left intact. But insensitiveness to the child's needs is not confined to parochial schools and other church institutions where children are harbored and taught. In Italy it is displayed in nearly every public and private institution where the young are segregated for purposes of instruction and maintenance. I would not be understood to say that there are not playgrounds of any kind connected with Italian schools, but the few that exist are scarcely worthy of the name. The plain truth of the matter is that the play instinct has been thwarted so long in the Italian that it doesn't seem to exist any more. One of the things that strikes the stranger who penetrates far enough into family life to permit him the opportunity of observation is that the parent doesn't play with his children as does the Anglo-Saxon, and children do not play with each other. I cannot conceive that the child, left to itself, does not "Hold unconscious intercourse with beauty Old as creation," and give evidence of it and of the activity of its developing mind which reveals itself constructively in that which we call play. But the observation and experience of children in Italy lead me to believe that when they grow up and recall "Those recollected hours that have the charm Of visionary things, those lovely forms And sweet sensations that throw back their life, And almost make remotest infancy A visible scene, on which the sun is shining," they do not expose a treasure-house in which are stored the recollections of the most envied times of their lives. The little _villino_ that I occupy is cared for by a couple whose only child is a little girl of eight. From my window I survey her activities and I have never yet seen her in play, "Seen no little plan of chart or fragment From her beam of human life Shaped by herself with newly learned art."