"Because I got it here; and it is against the law of this town to take anything from this beach, except shells. Did you know that? I didn't; my father just 'splained it to me." American fathers and mothers explain so many things to their children! And American children explain quite as great a number of things to their parents. They can; because they are not only friends, but familiar friends. We have all read Continental autobiographies, of which the chapters under the general title "Early Years" contained records of fears based upon images implanted in the mind and flourishing there-- images arising from some childish misapprehension or misinterpretation of some ordinary and perfectly explainable circumstance. "I was afraid to pass a closed closet alone after dark," one of these says. "I had heard of 'skeletons in closets'; I knew there were none in our closets in the daytime, but I couldn't be sure that they did not come to sleep in them at night; and I was too shy to inquire of my parents. What terrors I suffered! I was half-grown before I understood what a 'skeleton in a closet' was." An American child would have discovered what one was within five minutes after hearing it first mentioned, provided he had the slightest interest in knowing. No American child is too shy to inquire of his parents concerning anything he may wish to know. Shyness is a veil children wear before strangers; in the company of their intimates they lay it aside-- and forget it. In the autobiographies of Americans we shall not find many accounts of childish terrors arising from any reserve in the direction of asking questions. In American homes there are no closets whose doors children are afraid to pass, or to open, even after dark. "American children are all so different!" an Englishman complained to me not long ago; "as different as their several homes. One can make no statement about them that is conclusive." But can one not? To be sure, they do vary, and their homes vary too; but in one great, significant, fundamental particular they are all alike. In American homes the parents not only love their children, and the children their parents; their "way of loving" is such that one may say of them, "Their souls do bear an equal yoke of love." They and their parents are "chums." II THE CHILD AT PLAY