where the family is treated _à la Molière_.

"Persia sends beautiful toys, from which can be inferred a national
taste for music, since most of their dolls are blowing instruments.

"Turkey, Egypt, Arabia, have sent no dolls. Do they make none, under
the impression, correct in a low state of culture, that dolls for
children become idols for men?

"The Finlanders and Laplanders, who are not troubled with such
religious prejudices, give rosy cheeks and bodies as fat as seals to
their dolls.

"The French toy represents the versatility of the nation, touching
every topic, grave or grotesque.

"From Berlin come long trains of artillery, regiments of lead, horse
and foot on moving tramways.

"From the Hartz and the Alps still issue those wooden herds, more
characteristic of the dull feelings of their makers than of the
instincts of the animals they represent.

"The American toys justify the rule we have found good elsewhere, that
their character both reveals and prefaces the national tendencies.
With us, toys refer the mind and habits of children to home economy,
husbandry, and mechanical labor; and their very material is durable,
mainly wood and iron.

"So from childhood every people has its sympathies expressed or