Mrs. Napier Malcolm after discussing the play life of Persian children adds: “But when all is said, the games and toys are very few in Persia as compared to those you are accustomed to. No great distinction is made between children and grown-ups, and really there is not so much difference as we find at home. The children are taught to take life very seriously ... and they have no time to grow up into proper men and women. The result is that we find the children too grown-up and the grown-ups too childish.”[37] [Sidenote: Need of the “Spirit of Play.”] “Little old men and women” the missionary called them in her plea that to the children of India might be brought the gift of CHILDHOOD, and so we must not be surprised that our missionaries find the lesson of “HOW TO PLAY” one of the most essential and one of the most difficult to teach in many lands. They have been at it for many years in a quiet, unpretentious way, these pioneers of thought and action. Now that the whole American public is being aroused as never before to the value and need of play for _all_ children, let us see to it that all necessary facilities are in the hands of our missionaries, and that their numbers are sufficiently reinforced so that the “Spirit of Play” may flit from land to land and bring smiles and joy and health and lessons of unselfishness and co-operation to little children who have long since forgotten how to play. [Sidenote: Parents ought to know how to play.] Not only because they are children today, but because they will in a few short years become parents, must we give the little ones this opportunity. If the fathers and mothers of the near future know how to value the development of the play instinct at its true worth, there is great hope for their children. If they can enter into the play spirit with their boys and girls, there will be a revolution in home ideals and companionships. That the lesson is not an easy one to learn or to teach, we are assured by Elizabeth Harrison, who says, “How many parents and teachers are there who can enter into this world of play and not spoil it? In my classes for mothers I have found that one of the most difficult things I have had to teach many of them has been how to play simply and genuinely as a child will play.”