The older girls take the little ones in hand, and talk to them and draw them out.

When an interesting phenomenon is noticed, _e.g._ in a Nature ramble, the children are accustomed to discuss it in groups, and to try to think out among themselves its cause and its meaning.

Gossip is of course discouraged; but it is scarcely necessary for Egeria to proscribe it; for idle talk has no attraction for children who are allowed to talk freely and frankly, at all times and in all places, about things that are really worth discussing.
Life is full of interest for children who are allowed, as these are, to take an active interest in it; and subjects of conversation are therefore ever presenting themselves, in school and out of school, to the happy children of Utopia.

This means that the life of each individual child is overflowing through many channels, an overflow which will carry the out-welling life into the lives of other living beings--human and infra-human, actual and imaginary--and even beyond these, when it has been met and reinforced by other surging currents, into the impersonal life of Humanity and of Nature.
(2) _The Dramatic Instinct_.
Whatever else young children may be, they are all born actors; and in a school which bases its scheme of education on the actualities of child life, it is but natural that the dramatic instinct should be fostered in every possible way.

"Work while you work, and play while you play," is one of those trite maxims which have been unintelligently repeated till they have lost whatever value they may once have possessed.