<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
<h3>CHILDREN'S TOYS</h3>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0"><em>Behold the child, by nature's kindly law</em><br/></span>
<span class="i0"><em>Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.</em><br/></span>
<span class="i0"><em>Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,</em><br/></span>
<span class="i0"><em>A little louder but as empty quite.</em><br/></span></div>
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i8">—<cite>Essay on Man. Alexander Pope, 1732.</cite><br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>In the year 1695 Mr. Higginson wrote from
Massachusetts to his brother in England, that
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[362]</SPAN></span>
<cite>Boston News Letter</cite> advertised "Dutch and English
Toys for Children," and Mr. Ernst says Boston had
a flourishing toy shop at that date. Other towns did
not, as we know from
many shipping orders.</p>
<div class="figcenter bord" style="width: 300px;"><SPAN name="old_doll" id="old_doll"></SPAN>
<ANTIMG src="images/i117.jpg" width-obs="300" height-obs="519" alt="old doll" />
<div class="caption"><p class="center">An Old Doll</p>
</div>
</div>
<p><cite>The Toy Shop or Sentimental
Preceptor</cite>, one
of Newbery's books,
gives a list of toys
which the young English
scholar sought;
they are a looking-glass,
a "spying glass,"
a "fluffed dog," a
pocket-book, a mask,
a drum, a doll, a watch,
a pair of scales. Few
of these articles named
would really be termed
toys. Some of the
games already alluded
to, such as top-spinning,
hoop-rolling, and the various games of ball,
required toys to carry them on; but they seemed
to fall into classification more naturally in the
chapter on games than in this one.</p>
<div class="figcenter bord" style="width: 450px;"><SPAN name="old" id="old"></SPAN>
<ANTIMG src="images/i118.jpg" width-obs="450" height-obs="576" alt="old doll2" />
<div class="caption"><p class="center">An Old Doll</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>I have often been asked whether the first childish<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[363]</SPAN></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[364]</SPAN></span>
found classic dolls, of ivory and terra-cotta, with
jointed legs and
arms. Sad little toys
are these; for their
human guardians are
scattered dust. Dolls
were called puppets
in olden times, and
babies. In the <cite>Gentleman's
Magazine</cite>,
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. Fashion-plates
are scarce more<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[365]</SPAN></span>
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.</p>
<div class="figcenter bord" style="width: 267px;"><SPAN name="french" id="french"></SPAN>
<ANTIMG src="images/i119.jpg" width-obs="267" height-obs="600" alt="French doll" />
<div class="caption"><p class="center">French Doll</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>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—</p>
<div class="poem">
<span class="i0">"What the children of Holland take pleasure in making,<br/></span>
<span class="i1">The children of England take pleasure in breaking."<br/></span></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The best dolls in England were originally sold at
Bartholomew Fair and were known as "Bartholomew
babies." The English poet, Ward, wrote:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<span class="i0">"Ladies d'y want fine Toys<br/></span>
<span class="i1">For Misses or for Boys<br/></span><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[366]</SPAN></span>
<span class="i1">Of all sorts I have Choice<br/></span>
<span class="i3">And pretty things to tease ye.<br/></span>
<span class="i1">I want a little Babye<br/></span>
<span class="i1">As pretty a one as may be<br/></span>
<span class="i3">With head-dress made of Feather."<br/></span></div>
<p>In <cite>Poor Robin's Almanack</cite>, 1695, is a reference to
a "Bartholomew baby trickt up with ribbons and
knots"; and they were known at the time of the
landing of the Pilgrims. Therefore it is not impossible
that some Winslow or Winthrop maid, some
little miss of Bradford or Brewster birth, brought
across seas a Bartholomew baby and was comforted
by it.</p>
<p>A pathetic interest is attached to the shapeless
similitude of a doll named Bangwell Putt, shown
facing page 370. It is in the collection at Deerfield
Memorial Hall. It was cherished for eighty
years by Clarissa Field of Northfield, Massachusetts,
who was born blind, and whose halting but
trusting rhymes of longing for the clear vision of
another world are fastened to the plaything she
loved in youth and in old age.</p>
<p>Nothing more absurd could be fancied than the
nomenclature "French" attached to the two shapeless,
inelegant creatures, a century old, shown on
pages 364 and 367. Yet gawky as they are, they
show signs of hard usage, which proves them to have<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[367]</SPAN></span>
had a more beloved life than the case of elegant
Spanish dolls, on page 389, which were evidently
too fine ever to
be touched. The
"White House
Doll" spent the
days of her youth
in the White
House at Washington,
with the
children of the
President, John
Quincy Adams,
and is still cherished
by his descendants.</p>
<div class="figcenter bord" style="width: 301px;"><SPAN name="also" id="also"></SPAN>
<ANTIMG src="images/i120.jpg" width-obs="301" height-obs="500" alt="Fench doll2" />
<div class="caption"><p class="center">French Doll</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>Skilful jackknives
could manufacture
home-made
dolls' furniture.
Birch
bark was especially
adaptable to
such uses. The
wicker cradles and "chaises" of babies were copied
in miniature for dolls. Tin toys were scarce, for
tin was not much used for domestic utensils. A<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[368]</SPAN></span>
tin horse and chaise over a hundred years old is
shown on page 373, and a quaint plaything it is.
The eternal desire of a child for something suggestive
of a horse found satisfaction in home-made
hobby-horses; and, when American ships wandered
over the world in the India trade, they brought
home to American children strange coaches and
chariots of gay colors and strange woods; these
were often comical copies of European shapes,
sometimes astonishingly crude, but ample for the
ever active imagination of a child to clothe with
beautiful outlines. An old coach is shown on
page 369, with the box in which it was originally<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[369]</SPAN></span>
packed. It is marked Leghorn, but is doubtless
Chinese.</p>
<div class="figcenter bord" style="width: 450px;"><SPAN name="furniture" id="furniture"></SPAN>
<ANTIMG src="images/i121.jpg" width-obs="450" height-obs="295" alt="furniture" />
<div class="caption"><p class="center">Dolls and Furniture</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="figcenter bord" style="width: 400px;"><SPAN name="coach" id="coach"></SPAN>
<ANTIMG src="images/i122.jpg" width-obs="400" height-obs="293" alt="coach" />
<div class="caption"><p class="center">Chinese Coach and Horses</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>The word "jack" as a common noun and in compound
words has been held to be a general term
applied to any contrivance which does the work of
a boy or servant, or a simple appliance which is
subjected to common usage. In French the name
Jacques was a term for a young man of menial condition.
The term "country jake" is of kindred
sense. Jack lord, jack meddler, jackanapes, Jack
Tar, smoke-jack, jack-o'-lantern, black-jack, jack-rabbit,
the term jack applied to the knave in playing
cards, and the expressions jack-at-a-pinch, jack
in office, jack in bedlam, jack in a box, jack of all
trades, and many others show the derivative meaning.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[370]</SPAN></span>
Hence jack-knife may mean a boy's knife.
In English dialect the word was jack-lag-knife,
also jack-a-legs, in Scotch, jock-te-leg—these by a
somewhat fanciful derivation said to be from Jacques
de Liege, the celebrated cutler.</p>
<div class="figcenter bord" style="width: 450px;"><SPAN name="knives" id="knives"></SPAN>
<ANTIMG src="images/i123.jpg" width-obs="450" height-obs="258" alt="knives" />
<div class="caption"><p class="center">Old Jack-knives</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>A good jack-knife was the most highly desired
possession of a boy. Days of weary work and
hours of persistent pleading were gone through with
in hundreds of cases before the prize was secured.
Barlow knives had a century of popularity. Some
now in Deerfield Memorial Hall are here shown.
Note the curved end, a shape now obsolete, but in
truth an excellent one for safe pocket carriage.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[371]</SPAN></span>
Knives of similar shape have been found that are
known to be a century and a half old. I have
never seen in America any of the old knives used
as lovers' tokens, with mottoes engraved on them,
referred to by Shakespeare. The boy's stock of
toys was largely supplied by his own jack-knife:
elder pop-guns, chestnut and willow whistles, windmills,
water-wheels, box-traps, figure 4 traps. Toy
weapons have varied little from the Christian era
till to-day. Clubs, slings, bows and arrows, air-guns,
are as old as the year One. Ere these were
used as toys, they had been formidable weapons.
They were weapons still, for some years of colonial
life. In 1645 the court of Massachusetts ordered
that all boys from ten to sixteen years old should
be exercised with bows and arrows.</p>
<div class="figcenter bord" style="width: 377px;"><SPAN name="putt" id="putt"></SPAN>
<ANTIMG src="images/i124.jpg" width-obs="377" height-obs="600" alt="Putt" />
<div class="caption"><p class="center">Bangwell Putt</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>Skating is an ancient pastime. As early as the
thirteenth century Fitzstephen tells of young Londoners
fastening the leg-bones of animals to the
soles of the feet, and then pushing themselves on
the ice by means of poles shod with sharp iron
points.</p>
<p>Pepys thought skating "a very pretty art" when
he saw it in 1662, but it was then a novelty to him,
and he was characteristically a little afraid of it;
justly disturbed, too, that the Duke of York would
go "though the ice was broken and dangerous, yet<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[372]</SPAN></span>
he would go slide upon his scates which I did not
like—but he slides very well."</p>
<div class="figcenter bord" style="width: 250px;"><SPAN name="white_house" id="white_house"></SPAN>
<ANTIMG src="images/i125.jpg" width-obs="250" height-obs="347" alt="white house doll" />
<div class="caption"><p class="center">White House Doll</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>Wooden skates shod with iron runners were invented
in the Low Countries. Dutch children in
New Netherlands
all skated, just as
their grandfathers
had in old Batavia.
The first skates that
William Livingstone
had on the
frozen Hudson were
made of beef bones,
as were those of
mediæval children.
In Massachusetts
and Connecticut,
skating was among
the many Dutch
ways and doings
practised by English
folk in the new
world. The Plymouth Pilgrims brought these
Dutch customs to the new world through their
long and intimate sojourn in Holland; the New
Haven and Connecticut Valley settlers learned them
through their constant trade and intercourse with<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[373]</SPAN></span>
their neighbors, the Dutch of Manhattan; but the
Massachusetts Bay settlers of Boston and Salem
had known these Dutch ways longer,—they
brought them from England across seas, from the
counties of Essex and Suffolk, where the Dutch
had gone years before and married with the
English.</p>
<div class="figcenter bord" style="width: 450px;"><SPAN name="tin" id="tin"></SPAN>
<ANTIMG src="images/i126.jpg" width-obs="450" height-obs="297" alt="tin" />
<div class="caption"><p class="center">Old Tin Toy</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>New England boys in those early days went
skating on thin ice and broke through and were
drowned, just as New England boys and girls are
to-day, alas! Judge Sewall wrote in his diary on the
last day in November, in 1696, that many scholars<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[374]</SPAN></span>
went to "scate" on Fresh Pond, and that two
boys, named Maxwell and Eyre, fell in and were
drowned.</p>
<div class="figcenter bord" style="width: 450px;"><SPAN name="wicker" id="wicker"></SPAN>
<ANTIMG src="images/i127.jpg" width-obs="450" height-obs="341" alt="wicker coach" />
<div class="caption"><p class="center">Doll's Wicker Coach</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>Advertisements of men's and boys' skates and of
"Best Holland Scates of Different Sizes," show a
constant demand and use. In an invoice of "sundry
merchandise" to Weathersfield, Connecticut, in
the year 1763, are twelve pair "small brass scates,
@ 3/—£3, 16/." I do not know the age of the
skates shown opposite page 346. No date less
than a hundred years ago is ever willingly assigned<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[375]</SPAN></span>
to such relics. They are similar in shape to the
ones shown on page 349, in the illustration taken
from a book for children entitled <cite>Children's Sports</cite>,
published a century ago, which ends its dissertation
on skating with this sensible advice:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"'Tis true it looks exceeding nice<br/></span>
<span class="i1">To see boys gliding on the ice,<br/></span>
<span class="i1">And to behold so many feats<br/></span>
<span class="i1">Perform'd upon the sliding skates,<br/></span>
<span class="i1">But before you venture there<br/></span>
<span class="i1">Wait until the ice will bear,<br/></span>
<span class="i1">For want of this both young and old<br/></span>
<span class="i1">Have tumbled in,—got wet and cold."<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>It was not until October, 1771, that a pleasure-filled
item appeared, "Boys' Marbles." In <cite>The
Pretty Little Pocket Book</cite> are these lines:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i4">"MARBLES<br/></span></div>
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Knuckle down to your Taw.<br/></span>
<span class="i3">Aim well, shoot away.<br/></span>
<span class="i1">Keep out of the Ring,<br/></span>
<span class="i3">You'll soon learn to Play.<br/></span></div>
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i4">MORAL<br/></span></div>
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Time rolls like a Marble,<br/></span>
<span class="i3">And drives every State.<br/></span>
<span class="i1">Then improve each Moment,<br/></span>
<span class="i3">Before its too late."<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[376]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Boys played with them precisely as boys do now.
The poet Cowper in his <cite>Tirocinium</cite> says of the
games of his school life:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<span class="i0">"The little ones unbutton'd, glowing hot<br/></span>
<span class="i1">Playing our games and on the very spot<br/></span>
<span class="i1">As happy as we once, to kneel and draw<br/></span>
<span class="i1">The chalky ring, and knuckle down at taw."<br/></span></div>
<p>The terms used were the same as those heard
to-day in school yards: taws, vent, back-licks,
rounces, dubs, alleys, and alley-taws, agates, bull's-eyes,
and commoneys. Jackstones was an old
English game known in Locke's day as dibstones.
Other names for the game were chuckstones,
chuckie-stones, and clinches. The game is precisely
the same as was played two centuries ago;
it was a girl's game then—it is a girl's game now.</p>
<p>Battledores and Shuttles were advertised for sale
in Boston in 1761; but they are far older than
that. Many portraits of children show battledores,
as that of Thomas Aston Coffin. All books of
children's games speak of them. It was,
in fact, a popular game, and deemed
a properly elegant exercise for
decorous young misses
to indulge
in.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[377]</SPAN></span></p>
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