pole, in a warm house of fur, has a doll, sometimes a foot tall, dressed in fur even to the hands, where the hair stands "like a fright." On the ship Vega which was laid up for some time among these people, somebody drew a picture of the Tuski doll, whose fur clothes "come off," and whose little owner plays "house" with it like doll-mammas all over the world. Even the Tuski's neighbor, the Esquimau girl, builds a snow hut for a playhouse, places in it a lamp to, keep dolly warm, and has as much pleas ure, I hope, as our own little folk. The doll is of ivory or wood, with eyes and nose of bits of shell. It is dressed in fur, and is, no doubt, fed on the choicest bits of blubber that fall to the share of its droll dumpy little mamma. To jump from the coldest to the warmest: the dark-skinned Malay girls scorn babies of rags or of wood; they prefer their playthings alive, and the favorite pet is a little pig which they carry about wherever they go. The paradise of dolls is in Asia. The countries that share the honor of making much of the queen of toys are Siam, India and Japan. The yellow-satiny maidens of Siam have many dolls; for the poor they are of clay, and for the well-to-do of wood, carved with clothes on and gayly painted, or of cloth dressed like their owners. Siamese girls make a great ado over their dolls. They have houses completely furnished with everything necessary to Siamese life; bamboo huts which float in the river like some of the houses for grown-ups and elegant houses which often stand in a cultivated. doll-garden with a doll-temple near by. The little mammas give feasts to their friends' dolls, take them to church, marry them and bury them, just as little folk nearer home do. They spend whole days in the playhouse. THE LETITIA PENN DOLL. The young Siamese appear to enjoy their precious dollies very much like the rest of the girl-world, except one class, the unfortunate maidens of the royal family. They own, indeed, dozens of dolls, fine palaces for them to live in, and everything complete, but the poor little things do not play with them. They have so many slaves, and so little notion of the pleasure of doing for themselves, that they sit and look on while the slaves play for them, talking for the dolls and moving them about. This surely, is a strange way to play with dolls, is it not? main thing after all. But I suppose the royal children enjoy it, and that is the The Hindoo girl who lives, as one may say, next door to Siam, has a better time, though her doll is a stiff wooden affair, dress and all, with nothing that comes off but the head, and painted all the colors of the rainbow, the ears one bright color, the chin another, and dabs of gilt wherever they can be put. But great doings go on in India over these important members of the family; they have their own room in the house; they are sung to sleep; they marry dolls of other families, and have street processions, sometimes with music, and with sugar-plums and money scat THE JAPANESE DOLL. tered among the people, as if they were flesh and blood and it were a real marriage. But children are born imitators the world over. In Japan the doll reigns if anywhere, and that is the only country where it THE MORMON DOLLS. has a day of its own. The Japanese Feast of Dolls is an affair you have all read of; it happens on the third of March, when hundreds of them, with all their belongings, are set out in every house, and the toy shops have nothing to sell but dolls, and doll-houses and furniture and clothes and dishes, and in fact everything necessary to the life of a Japanese doll. Then all the dolls in the family cherished for generations from the great-great grandmother down to the very babies, come out to show themselves and have a feast. But these show dolls often represent characters in stories, or heroes or royal people, and though greatly loved are too fine for every day, so after the feast is over each one is wrapped in silver paper and laid away in a chest till next year, and the quaint little Japanese girls return to their own dear everyday dollies which dress in a wadded dressing-gown, with wide sleeves like their own, have their private three-inch tables to eat from, their especial wooden pillows on which to sleep, and ride on the mothers' backs from morning till night, like any live baby of Japan. We can't say much about the woolly-headed maids of Africa, for they have hardly anything in the world, but so far as travelers have noticed the sly little things they, too, have their dolls of clay or leather, dressed or undressed like themselves, and living in huts of the same pattern as their own. But where did dolly get her name? In France she is called Poupeé, and in Germany Puppe; both are from the Latin Pupa, or girl. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, however, refused to name the little queen from the Romans, but gave her one of their own, supposed to be from the old name for servant girl," daul," though the encyclopædia impertinently suggests it may be from idol. There's only one place I know of where dolly is badly treated, except by teasing boys, and that is in England, where a black doll was formerly hung in front of a shop, as a sign that silks and muslins from India were for sale. That has gone out of fashion; but now what is worse-a doll of the same sable hue is strung up before a rag and junk shop, which is called a "Dolly Shop." I should like to have England explain her conduct in thus insulting the Queen of the world of Make-believe. A LITTLE Red Lizard lived in a spring, Close by a frog that was learning to sing. "Such discordant struggles to get up to G," Said the Little Red Lizard, "are too much for me." S. M. E. |