In certain hours of his study of literature and literary appreciation one is ready to believe that this impulse toward impersonation is the very fundamental fact in that appreciation. It is the door through which one enters into the situations and feelings which make up the life represented in the story, poem, or drama. This it is that gives that strange grip of reality to literature; it is this that turns the appreciation of literature into personal culture, so that in a very real sense one may substitute literature for experience. It is easy to utilize this passion very early, turning it in the direction of art. In the kindergarten they have long known how to adapt it in the play which they so wisely interchange and amalgamate with their games; and the little pantomimes of "Bo-peep" and "Little Boy Blue," of flocks of birds, of butterflies on the wing, and what not, are on the road to true dramatic art. But, alas! this is cut all too short in the school--the average school, where the scholars are converted immediately into the veriest little pitchers--all ears; and, instead of being twenty selves in a day, they are denied the privilege of being even one whole one. This gift for impersonation should, like all their imaginative experiences, be conserved by exercise and guidance; otherwise it remains merely chaotic and accidental, and very soon the child himself is ashamed of it and regards its exercise as a "baby" performance to be left behind in the kindergarten. This exercise and guidance may be given by training the children in little plays, which, to begin with, are not much more than pantomime, but which add, as they go on, other elements of the real drama--an organized action and dialogue. Of course, there is the dramatic monologue--the recitation. But this does not meet the needs of the class. It is impossible that all the children should sympathetically impersonate the same character and realize the same experience. Neither does this sort of exercise--the recitation--give a chance for co-operation in the production of a bit of social art; it does not give them the discipline of apprehending and producing a large whole, and it tends to develop and foster an unendurable kind and degree of egoism.