But, remember, although he ought not to be allowed to have poison paint-boxes and poison-painted toys, _he must have an abundance of toys_, such as the white-wood toys—brewers’ drays, millers’ wagons, boxes of wooden bricks, etc. The Noah’s Ark is one of the most amusing and instructive toys for a child. “Those fashioned out of brown, unpainted pine-wood by the clever carvers of Nuremberg or the Black Forest are the best, I think, not only because they are the most spirited, but because they will survive a good deal of knocking about, and can be sucked with impunity. From the first dawn of recollection, children are thus familiarized with the forms of natural objects, and may be well up in natural history before they have mastered the A B C.” Parents often make Sunday a day of gloom: to this I much object. Of all the days in the week, Sunday should be the most cheerful and pleasant. It is considered by our Church a festival; and a glorious festival it ought to be made, and one on which our Heavenly Father wishes to see all His children happy and full of innocent joy! Let Sunday, then, be made a cheerful, joyous, innocently happy day, and not, as it frequently is, the most miserable and dismal in the week. It is my firm conviction that many men have been made irreligious by the ridiculously strict and dismal way they were compelled, as children, to spend their Sundays. You can no more make children religious by gloomy asceticism, than you can make people good by Act of Parliament! One of the great follies of the present age is, children’s parties, where they are allowed to be dressed like grown-up women, stuck out in crinoline, and encouraged to eat rich cake and pastry, and to drink wine, and to sit up late at night! There is something disgusting and demoralizing in all this. Their pure minds are blighted by it. Do not let me be misunderstood: there is not the least objection, but, on the contrary, great advantage, for friends’ children to meet friends’ children; but then let them be treated as children, and not as men and women! 178. _Do you approve of public play-grounds for children?_