CHAPTER VI.
LESSONS AND PLAY.
"What think we of thy soul?
* * * * "Born of full stature, lineal to control; And yet a pigmy's yoke must undergo.
Yet must keep pace and tarry, patient, kind, With its unwilling scholar, the dull, tardy mind; Must be obsequious to the body's powers, Whose low hands mete its paths, set ope and close its ways, Must do obeisance to the days, And wait the little pleasure of the hours; Yea, ripe for kingship, yet must be Captive in statuted minority!" "Sister Songs," by FRANCIS THOMPSON.
Lessons and play used to be as clearly marked off one from the other as land and water on the older maps.

Now we see some contour maps in which the land below so many feet and the sea within so many fathoms' depth are represented by the same marking, or left blank.

In the same way the tendency in education at present is almost to obliterate the line of demarcation, at least for younger children, so that lessons become a particular form of play, "with a purpose," and play becomes a sublimated form of lessons, as the druggists used to say, "an elegant preparation" of something bitter.

If the Board of Education were to name a commission composed of children, and require it to look into the system, it is doubtful whether they would give a completely satisfactory report.

They would probably judge it to be too uniform in tone, poor in colour and contrast, deficient in sparkle.