A NOVEL PLAYHOUSE. 



LITTLE Mary Seaton has come to spend the afternoon with her twin cousins Paul and Pearl Terrill, and a happy time they are having. Mamma has let them take the umbrella, which, with a shawl, they have made into a playhouse.  Paul is the coachman, and he has just come to tell them that the carriage is ready for them to take a ride. This carriage, by the way, is a large box, and the horses are two chairs harnessed together; but Paul cracks his whip, speaks to his horses, and fine rides they all have. But now Pearl tells Paul that May is taken very sick, and that they cannot go for a ride, but that he must go at once for the doctor.

Now all this is make-believe-so, but these little people enjoy it very much. And, indeed, by "playing it is so," they almost imagine that it really is, and so their play becomes earnest to them.

We remember reading, not long since, of two little girls who never had any playthings because their parents were too poor to buy them. One night their papa brought them a basket of blocks from a house that was building near where he worked. Oh, how nice they were! The girls played that these pieces of wood were houses, and horses, and men, indeed, we cannot begin to tell the shapes, and names that these blocks took in the minds of these little players. How much happiness they got out of these pieces of wood by simply "playing it is so!" Little friends, learn from this to try to make the most of what you have, and be happy.





 V. A. M.