W. W. Newell, in Games and Songs of American Children, says: “Observe a little girl who has attended her mother for an airing in some city park. The older person, quietly seated beside the footpath, is half absorbed in reverie; takes little notice of passers-by, or of neighboring sights or sounds, further than to cast an occasional glance, which may inform her of the child’s security. The other, left to her own devices, wanders contented within the limited scope, incessantly prattling to herself; now climbing an adjoining rock, now flitting like a bird from one side of the pathway to the other. Listen to her monologue, flowing as incessantly and musically as the bubbling of a spring; if you can catch enough to follow her thought, you will find a perpetual romance unfolding itself in her mind. Imaginary persons accompany her footsteps; the properties of a childish theatre exist in her fancy; she sustains a conversation in three or four characters.” The expression of the dramatic instinct may be observed on every hand, not only among children, but grown-ups as well. It animates the group conversing on the street corner, arousing the observer to imagine what the topic of conversation may be. It also enlivens the drawing-room, thus helping to make the social function a success. His observation of it may well have stirred the poet to say, “The world’s a stage, and we are players all.” And as our parts on the world stage change with the changing years, so the expression of this instinct is different in each of the three periods of childhood. ITS EXPRESSION IN EARLY CHILDHOOD During very early childhood little folks express the dramatic instinct entirely by imitation. They imitate people, birds, animals, noises; they try to enter into every experience which is within their reach by gesture, speech, or repeated action. As Joseph Lee tells us, “The mind first learns things by getting inside them, by being what it studies.” The child’s imagination is not capable of creating new situations, it simply enables him to reproduce the actions of other people in familiar ones. He mirrors the world as he understands it. These expressions are entirely individualistic and usually unconscious. This endeavor to mirror and imitate the life about him is a most important means by which the child educates himself. Evidently, the more varied the life which he sees, the more variety will enter into his play, and the broader will be the child’s intelligence.