In every country and in every age those who have eyes to see have watched the same little dramas. What Wordsworth saw was seen nineteen hundred years ago in the Syrian market-place, where the children complained of their unresponsive companions: "We have piped the glad chaunt of the marriage, but ye have not danced, we have wailed our lamentation, but ye have not joined our mourning procession." Since the very name Kindergarten is to imply a teaching which fulfils the child's own wants and desires, it must supply abundant provision for the dramatic representation of life. Adults have always been ready to use for their own purposes the strong tendency to imitate, which is a characteristic of all normal children, but few even now realise to what extent a child profits by his imitative play. The explanation that Froebel found for this will now be generally accepted, viz. that only by acting it out can a child fully grasp an idea, "For what he tries to represent or do, he begins to understand." He thinks in action, or as one writer put it, he "apperceives with his muscles." This explanation seems to cover imitative play, from the little child's imitative wave of the hand up to such elaborate imitations as are described in Stanley Hall's _Story of a Sand Pile,_[18] or in Dewey's _Schools of To-morrow._ But when we think of the joy of such imaginative play as that of Red Indians, shipwrecks and desert islands, we feel that these show a craving for experience, for life, such a craving as causes the adult to lose himself in a book of travels or in a dramatic performance, and which explains the phenomenal success of the cinema, poor stuff as it is. [Footnote 18: Or that delightful "Play Town" in _The Play Way_.] We thirst for experiences, even for those which are unpleasant; we wonder "how it feels" to be up in an aeroplane or down in a submarine. We are far indeed from desiring air-raids, but if such things must be, there is a curious satisfaction in being "in it." And though the experiences they desire may be matters of everyday occurrence to us, children probably feel the craving even more keenly. "You may write what you like," said a teacher, and a somewhat inarticulate child wrote, "I was out last night, it was late." "Why, Jack," said another, "you've painted your cow green; did you ever see a green cow?" "No," said Jack, "but I'd like to."