It is far better to have fewer and better toys than more of an inferior quality. The thing to keep in mind is that a toy is neither an artistic model, an aesthetic ornament, nor a mechanical spectacle, but should be a stimulus to call forth self-activity, invention, ingenuity, imagination, and skill. X. CHILDREN'S GANGS, CLUBS, AND FRIENDSHIPS "What a plague boys are!" sighed Mrs. Brown. "That White boy has been getting our Harry into all sorts of mischief, and I can't make Harry give up that gang." Mrs. Green agreed that boys were a plague. Her Jack went with a lot of boys, too, and they were always up to some sort of tricks which she was quite sure _her_ boy would never do if it were not for those other boys. And Mrs. Green was right. Any boy will do things when he is with the gang that he never would think of doing alone-- and that he wouldn't dare to do alone, if he did think of them. Even your boy--and mine, too, I hope. That's the way of boys. What we mothers will have to do is to stop fretting about the other boys in the gang who spoil our boys, and about the mischief and noise and dirty boots and staying away late for meals, and get down to a practical way of making all the boys in the gang as we find them into a lot of decent young men. We shall have to stop trying to make boys do what it is impossible for them to do; and we shall have to stop trying to keep the boys from doing what it is absolutely necessary that they should do, if they are to develop into the decent young men we have in mind. The modern way, the efficient way, of treating children is to find out their instincts and then use these almost irresistible forces of nature as a means of directing their development. And that is what we shall have to do with the boy and his gang, and that is what we shall have to do with the girl and her set. The boy is a more serious problem because, under the promptings of his instincts, he soon becomes indifferent to the attractions and amusements of the home and seeks the companionship of boys of his own age, and he seeks activities that cannot, for the most part, be carried on in the home. The girl, on the other hand, remains much longer subject to the will of her mother and to the conventions and standards of the home; she remains for a longer period satisfied with the kinds of activities that can be carried on at home.