CHAPTER XVIII CHILDREN'S TOYS Behold the child, by nature's kindly law - Essay on Man. Alexander Pope, 1732. N the year 1695 Mr. Higginson wrote from I if toys were imported in small quantity to America they would sell. In very small quantity, we fancy, though the influence of crown and court began to be felt in New England, and many articles of luxury were exported to that colony as they were to Virginia. According to our present ideas, playthings for children in colonial time were few in number, save the various ones they manufactured for themselves. They played more games, and had fewer toys than modern children. In 1712, on the list of rich goods brought into Boston by a privateersman and sold there, were "Boxes of Toys." In 1743 the Boston 361 Boston News Letter advertised "Dutch and English Toys for Children," and Mr. Ernst says Boston had a flourishing toy shop at that date. Other towns did An Old Doll ning, hoop-rolling, and the not, as we know from many shipping orders. The Toy Shop or Sentimental Preceptor, one of Newbery's books, gives a list of toys which the young English scholar sought; they are a lookingglass, a "spying glass," "fluffed dog," a a required toys to carry them on; but they seemed to fall into classification more naturally in the chapter on games than in this one. I have often been asked whether the first childish girl emigrants to this solemn new world had the comfort of dolls. They certainly had something in the semblance of a doll, though far removed from the radiant doll creatures of this day; little puppets, crude and shapeless, yet ever beloved symbols of maternity, have been known to children in all countries and all ages; dolls are as old as the world and human life. In the tombs of Attica are found found classic dolls, of ivory and terra-cotta, with jointed legs and arms. Sad little toys London, September, 1751, is an early use of the word doll, "Several dolls with different dresses made in St. James Street have been sent to the Czarina to show the manner of dressing at present in fashion among English ladies." This circulation of dressed dolls as fashion transmitters was a universal custom. Fashionplates are scarce more than than a century old in use. Dolls were sent from house to house, from town to town, from country to country, and even to a new continent. These babies for fashion models came to be made in large numbers for the use of milliners; and as the finest ones came from the Netherlands, they were called "Flanders babies." To the busy fingers of Dutch children, English and American children owed many toys besides these dolls. It was a rhymed reproach to the latter that "What the children of Holland take pleasure in making, Fashions changed, and the modish raiment grew antiquated and despised; but still the "Flanders babies" had a cherished old age. They were graduated from milliners' boxes and mantua-makers' show rooms to nurseries and play-rooms where they reigned as queens of juvenile hearts. There are old ladies still living who recall the dolls of their youth as having been the battered fashion dolls sent to their mammas. The best dolls in England were originally sold at Bartholomew Fair and were known as "Bartholomew babies." The English poet, Ward, wrote: "Ladies d'y want fine Toys For Misses or for Boys Of |