character. When five-year-old Freddy says that he wants to become a
lawyer or a doctor, you encourage him. You say, "That's fine, my
boy," and in your mind's eye you see him climbing to fame and
fortune. But when Freddy says that he wants to be a policeman and
marry the candy-lady, you laugh at him, and you certainly do
_not_ encourage him. But in Freddy's mind doctor and lawyer
mean no more than policeman; they involve no more important social
service, they mean no more dignity in personal position, they
suggest nothing more of anything that is worth while. For whatever
it is that Freddy wants to be at any moment is to him the sum of all
that is to him worth while--and that is just what an ideal ought to
be.

This is not a plea to cruel parents in behalf of smoothing Freddy's
path toward the coveted post--or the course of his courtship of the
candy-lady's daughter. It is simply an effort to point out how
important it is to avoid shattering early in life that precious
mirror in which alone visions are to be seen. When you have
ridiculed the policeman out of further consideration, you are likely
with the same act to have weakened Freddy's faith in ideals--and to
this extent you have loosened one of the safest props of his
character. We need not be afraid of the crude and short-sighted
ideals of the young child. With the growth of his experience his
ideals will expand. We should fear rather to infect him with the
vulgar disrespect for all ideals.

In a few years Freddy has his heart set on charting the blank spaces
on his geography map, and he has never a thought for the girls. It
is the same Freddy, but he has in the meanwhile roamed far from the
home neighborhood--in imagination--and has discovered new heroes and