There was just such a case in a large northern town. The recreation ground was opened with pomp, and was elaborately fitted with swings, parallel bars, etc. For a week or two a few children made efforts to amuse themselves there, but it was quickly deserted. In the immediate neighbourhood were sundry patches of ground where no houses had as yet been built, and on which lay fascinating heaps of brick bats and refuse. Needless to say these offered far greater attractions than the new and orderly playground. Small children do not care to play “to order.” They have enough of that during school hours. When they get a bit older they will be willing enough to join in games on specified grounds and governed by codes of rules, but while they are little they like to find their own playgrounds and invent their own games. [Sidenote: A Game in a Stackyard.] Memory brings a vision of two children, one a little girl with soft dark hair and big black eyes, who is dressed in a blue and white cotton frock, and a big white straw hat; the other a sturdy, but commonplace boy, in grey knickerbockers, a holland blouse, with a broad black leather belt, and a flannel cap. They are about the same age, neither of them being yet seven, and they are playing in a stack-yard. It is not the stacks that are the attraction, for just now there are none there, but for all that it is a glorious playground. In the first place, it is well out of the way of the grown-up people, and in the next place, though there are no stacks, there are the stone supports on which they once stood. What excellent tables they make, these old grey upright blocks, of which the flat round tops project like real tables, and are practically useful in preventing rats and mice from climbing up. But there is something else which has drawn the children to that spot, for all about in the yard there is to be found a tall plant with a quantity of red seed, which must, I fancy, be some kind of sorrel. It is delicious to draw your hand up the stalk and bring it away full of this seed, and that is what these children are busy doing. Next they put it in a heap on a slate which they have discovered, and then search for pieces of brick and flat stone, which are piled on the top. In this way a certain quantity of the seed is compressed, and called a cheese, which is deposited with ceremony upon one of the stone tables. The little girl has been the leader throughout; she has decided which plants were ripe enough to be stripped, how much seed was necessary to form a cheese, and upon which of the stones the feast should be spread. The boy has been her obedient servant, a position of things which reaches its climax when the little lady suddenly states that she doesn’t like cheese, and orders him to eat it all up! This is a vision that has come from time to time for more than forty years, and few playgrounds have seemed so attractive. [Sidenote: The Old Tree in the Garden.]