TUNBRIDGE TOYS.


I wonder whether those little silver pencil-cases with a movable almanac
at the butt-end are still favorite implements with boys, and whether
pedlers still hawk them about the country? Are there pedlers and hawkers
still, or are rustics and children grown too sharp to deal with them?
Those pencil-cases, as far as my memory serves me, were not of much use.
The screw, upon which the movable almanac turned, was constantly getting
loose. The 1 of the table would work from its moorings, under Tuesday
or Wednesday, as the case might be, and you would find, on examination,
that Th. or W. was the 23 1/2 of the month (which was absurd on the
face of the thing), and in a word your cherished pencil-case an utterly
unreliable time-keeper. Nor was this a matter of wonder. Consider the
position of a pencil-case in a boy's pocket. You had hard-bake in it;
marbles, kept in your purse when the money was all gone; your mother's
purse, knitted so fondly and supplied with a little bit of gold, long
since--prodigal little son!--scattered amongst the swine--I mean
amongst brandy-balls, open tarts, three-cornered puffs, and similar
abominations. You had a top and string; a knife; a piece of cobbler's
wax; two or three bullets; a Little Warbler; and I, for my part,
remember, for a considerable period, a brass-barrelled pocket-pistol
(which would fire beautifully, for with it I shot off a button from Butt
Major's jacket);--with all these things, and ever so many more, clinking
and rattling in your pockets, and your hands, of course, keeping them in
perpetual movement, how could you expect your movable almanac not to
be twisted out of its place now and again--your pencil-case to be