How children do love to play! They love to play in the house with their blocks and games, dishes and dolls. But they love to play out-of-doors still better, because there are so many pleasant things there that they cannot find in the house.

The air out-of-doors is so fresh, the sun so bright, and sky so blue, and the carpet of soft green grass all over the ground is so much finer than the carpet in the house. Here and there are tiny flowers and red strawberries peeping out of the grass and waiting to be picked. Bees and bright-winged butterflies and dear little humming birds are flying in and out among the rose bushes. In the great leafy trees are young birds with their mouths wide open, waiting for the mother bird to give them something to eat. There are pet hens, so tame that they will come and eat right out of your hand, with soft, downey little chicks that follow them wherever they go.

In the farm yard some little people find pet kitten, rabbits, lambs, and goats; the horses waiting to be fed, and the cows to be milked. In tiny streams they find pretty stones and pebbles, and many queer little animals and fish, besides the ducks and geese that love to float upon the water.

Then, there is the garden, in which may be found at different seasons, strawberries, lettuce, radishes, onions, cabbage, beets, currents, gooseberries, blackberries, raspberries, and many other things that are good to eat. Out in the fields are the turnips and potatoes waiting to be hoed, and the fresh hay to be raked up in heaps. In the orchard are apple, peach, and cherry trees, where at certain times are red cherries, great rosey apples, and sweet juicy peaches. Along the road or in the woods are other trees which are sometimes loaded down with hickory nuts, hazelnuts, butternuts, walnuts, beechnuts, filberts, and chestnuts.

How many of these things did you ever see? Well, all of these, and many other things, cause it to be more pleasant out-of-doors than in the house.

In the winter, it gets very cold in some places, and when little boys and girls go out they have to put on thick coats and gloves, and something over their ears. But how beautiful it is even then! The soft, fleecy snow falls gently from the clouds and covers the houses and trees and ground with a robe of the purest white. Then the sun in the daytime, and the moon and the stars at night, shine upon this snow and make it so bright and sparkling that we can hardly look at it. What fun to go out and skate and play snow ball, to make snow men and snow houses, or to ride down the hill on a sledge! What beautiful and wonderful things are all around us!

But the grass, and flowers, and trees, and animals, and sunshine were already here when your father and mother were little children, and when your grandfather, and grandmother, and all your grown-up friends were children. (Ask them to tell you about it.) As all of these things were already here, when your friends were children, we know that none of these friends made them.

Did you ever stop to think where all the beautiful and wonderful things that you see came from? and how they were made? See if you can tell by the next week where we can find out all about it.

1. Do you like to play?
2. With what do you like to play when you are at home?
3. Where do you like to play better, in the house, or out-of-doors?
4. Why do you like to play out-of-doors better than in the house?
5. What kinds of animals have you at home?
6. What kinds of birds?
7. What kinds of trees grow near your house?
8. What kinds of flowers grow in your garden?
9. Tell what else you see when you go out-of-doors.
10. When you go out on a clear night and look up, what do you see?
11. Have you a father and a mother? a grandfather? a grandmother? any other grown-up friends?
12. Do you think that they were ever little like you?
13. Did the sun and the moon and the stars shine, and were there animals, and trees, and flowers when they were little children?
14. How do you know?
15. Then could they have made these beautiful things?

The Present Truth July 6, 1893
E. J. Waggoner

Story in pdf The Things that Are Made