TO MY PLAYMATE
Once upon a time two children read aloud together more or less of Darwin, Spencer, Lyell, Goethe, Carlyle, Taine, and other writers of equal note. Though the books were somewhat above their comprehension, and certainly not so well suited to their years as fairy-tales and romances, both the choice and the rejection were deliberately made and consistently maintained. The discrimination originated neither in excessive fondness of fact, nor in the slightest dislike of fiction; being solely due to a greater preference for the stories they themselves created than for those they found in books. Presently, one of these two, having found a new playfellow, stopped inventing and acting and living their joint imaginings, and the other one had to go on playing by himself. But he has never forgotten the original impulse, and so, in collecting the offspring of some of his earliest and some of his latest play-hours, his thoughts recur to the years of the old partnership, and he cannot please himself better than by putting his playmate, where she truly belongs, at the beginning of his “imaginary” playthings.