comparable to it: no other can make the dead heroes of the world rise up
and shake the dust of the ages from their bones and live and move and
breathe and speak and be real to the looker and listener: no other can
make the study of the lives and times of the illustrious dead a delight,
a splendid interest, a passion; and no other can paint a history-lesson
in colors that will stay, and stay, and never fade.

It is my conviction that the children's theatre is one of the very, very
great inventions of the twentieth century; and that its vast educational
value--now but dimly perceived and but vaguely understood--will presently
come to be recognized. By the article which I have been reading I find
the same things happening in the Howland School that we have become
familiar with in our Children's Theatre (of which I am President, and
sufficiently vain of the distinction.) These things among others;

1. The educating history-study does not stop with the little players,
but the whole school catches the infection and revels in it.

2. And it doesn't even stop there; the children carry it home and infect
the family with it--even the parents and grandparents; and the whole
household fall to studying history, and bygone manners and customs and
costumes with eager interest. And this interest is carried along to the
studying of costumes in old book-plates; and beyond that to the selecting
of fabrics and the making of clothes. Hundreds of our children learn,
the plays by listening without book, and by making notes; then the
listener goes home and plays the piece--all the parts! to the family.
And the family are glad and proud; glad to listen to the explanations and
analyses, glad to learn, glad to be lifted to planes above their dreary
workaday lives. Our children's theatre is educating 7,000 children--and
their families. When we put on a play of Shakespeare they fall to