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Goethe, in “Wilhelm Meister,” struck the key-note of the universal underlying dramatic instinct. The boy begins to play the drama of life with his puppets, and afterward exploits the wild dreams of youth in the company of the strolling players. We are, indeed, all actors. We all know how early the strutting soldier-instinct crops out, and how soon the little girl assumes the cares of the amateur nursery.

“I have learned from neighbor Nelly

What the girl’s doll-instinct means.”

We begin early to play at living, until Life becomes too strong for us, and, seizing us in merciless and severe grip, returns our condescension by making of us the puppets with which the passing tragedy or comedy is presented. With this idea in mind we have begun our little book with the play in the garret—the humblest attempt at histrionics—and so going on, still endeavoring to help those more ambitious artists who, in remote and secluded spots, may essay to amuse themselves and others by attempting the rôle of a Cushman, a Wallack, a Sothern, a Booth, or a Gilbert.

Our subsequent task has been a more difficult one. To tell people how to give all sorts of entertainments—in fact, to tell our intelligent people how to do anything—is nearly as foolish a practice as to carry coals to Newcastle, and implies that sort of conceit which Thackeray so wittily suggests when, in his “Rebecca and Rowena,” he presents the picture of a little imp painting the lily. It is hard to know where to draw the line. It would be delightful to amuse—to help along with the great business of making home happy—to tell a mother what to do with her active young brood, and yet to avoid that dreadful bore of mentioning to her something which she already knows a great deal better than we do.

The Scylla of barrenness and the Charybdis of garrulity are before any author who tries to speak upon a familiar theme. Let us hope that, through the kindness of our readers, we may not have wrecked our little bark on either.