The introduction of these living things seems to illustrate the large compass of the child’s realising power. Mr. Ruskin speaks somewhere of “the perfection of child-like imagination, the power of making everything out of nothing”. “The child,” he adds, "does not make a pet of a mechanical mouse that runs about the floor.... The child falls in love with a quiet thing—with an ugly one—nay, it may be with one to us totally devoid of meaning. The _besoin de croire_ precedes the _besoin d’aimer_." The quotation brings us to the focus where the rays of childish imagination seem to converge, the transformation of toys. The fact that children make living things out of their toy horses, dogs and the rest, is known to every observer of their ways. To the natural unsceptical eye the boy on his rudely carved “gee-gee” slashing the dull flank with all a boy’s glee, looks as if he were realising the joy of actual riding, as if he were possessed with the fancy that the stiff least organic-looking of structures which he strides is a very horse. The liveliness of this realising imagination is seen in the extraordinary poverty and meagreness of the toys which to their happy possessors are wholly satisfying. Here is a pretty picture of child’s play from a German writer:— There sits a little charming master of three years before his small table busied for a whole hour in a fanciful game with shells. He has three so-called snake-heads in his domain; a large one and two smaller ones: this means two calves and a cow. In a tiny tin dish the little farmer has put all kinds of petals, that is the fodder for his numerous and fine cattle.... When the play has lasted a time the fodder-dish transforms itself into a heavy waggon with hay: the little shells now become little horses, and are put to the shafts to pull the terrible load. The doll takes a supreme place in this fancy realm of play. It is human and satisfies higher instincts and emotions. As the French poet says, the little girl— Rêve el nom de mère en berçant sa poupée.[26] ----- Footnote 26: Goltz, _Buch der Kindheit_, pp. 4, 5. ----- I read somewhere recently that the doll is a plaything for girls only: but boys, though they often prefer india-rubber horses and other animals, not infrequently go through a stage of doll-love also, and are hardly less devoted than girls. Endless is the variety of _rôle_ assigned to the doll as to the tiny shell in our last picture of play. The doll is the all-important comrade in that _solitude à deux_ of which the child, like the adult, is so fond. Mrs. Burnett tells us that sitting holding her doll in the armchair of the parlour she would sail across enchanted seas to enchanted islands having all sorts of thrilling adventures. At another time when she wanted to act an Indian chief the doll just as obediently took up the part of squaw.