How To Do It by Edward Everett Hale

There is a good deal of the life of boys and girls which passes when they are with other boys and girls, and involves some difficulties with a great many pleasures, all its own. It is generally taken for granted that if the children are by themselves, all will go well. And if you boys and girls did but know it, many very complimentary things are said about you in this very matter. "Children do understand each other so well. " "Children get along so well with each other. " "I feel quite relieved when the children find some companions. " This sort of thing is said behind the children's backs at the very moment when the same children, quite strangers to each other, are wishing that they were at home themselves, or at least that these sudden new companions were.

There is a well-studied picture of this mixed-up life of boys and girls with other boys and girls who are quite strangers to them in the end of Miss Edgeworth's "Sequel to Frank," -- a book which I cannot get the young people to read as much as I wish they would. And I do not at this moment remember any other sketch of it in fiction quite so well managed, with so little overstatement, and with so much real good sense which children may remember to advantage.