Another important effect of the story is to develop at an early age sympathy for children of other countries where conditions are different from our own. I have so constantly to deal with the question of confusion between truth and fiction in the minds of children that it might be useful to offer here an example of the way they make the distinction for themselves. Mrs. Ewing says on this subject: "If there are young intellects so imperfect as to be incapable of distinguishing between fancy and falsehood, it is most desirable to develop in them the power to do so, but, as a rule, in childhood, we appreciate the distinction with a vivacity which as elders our care- clogged memories fail to recall." Mr. P. A. Barnett, in his book on the "Common-sense of Education," says, alluding to fairy-tales: "Children will _act_ them but not act _upon_ them, and they will not accept the incidents as part of their effectual belief. They will imagine, to be sure, grotesque worlds, full of admirable and interesting personages to whom strange things might have happened. So much the better: this largeness of imagination is one of the possessions that distinguish the better nurtured child from others less fortunate." The following passage from Stevenson's essay on _"Child Play"_[38] will furnish an instance of children's aptitude for creating their own dramatic atmosphere: "When my cousin and I took our porridge of a morning, we had a device to enliven the course of a meal. He ate his with sugar, and explained it to be a country continually buried under snow. I took mine with milk, and explained it to be country suffering gradual inundation. You can imagine us exchanging bulletins; how here was an island still unsubmerged, here a valley not yet covered with snow; what inventions were made; how his population lived in cabins on perches and traveled on stilts, and how mine was always in boats; how the interest grew furious as the last corner of safe ground was cut off on all sides and grew smaller every moment; and how, in fine, the food was of altogether secondary importance, and might even have been nauseous, so long as we seasoned it with these dreams. But perhaps the most exciting moments I ever had over a meal were in the case of calf's foot jelly. It was hardly possible not to believe--and you may be quite sure, so far from trying, I did all I could to favor the illusion--that some part of it was hollow and that sooner or later my spoon would lay open the secret tabernacle of the golden rock. There, might some _Red-Beard_ await his hour; there might one find the treasures of the Forty Thieves. And so I quarried on slowly, with bated breath, savoring the interest. Believe me, I had little palate left for the jelly; and though I preferred the taste when I tool cream with it, I used often to go without because the cream dimmed the transparent fractures."