plays with his prize until he tires of it and then he eats it.


BLOCK GAMES--KINDERGARTEN

It was on a bright spring afternoon that a Chinese official and
his little boy called at our home on Filial Piety Lane, in
Peking.

The dresses of father and child were exactly alike--as
though they had been twins, boots of black velvet or satin,
blue silk trousers, a long blue silk garment, a waistcoat of
blue brocade, and a black satin skullcap--the child was in
every respect, even to the dignity of his bearing, a vest-
pocket edition of his father.

He had a T'ao of books which I recognized as the Fifteen
Magic Blocks, one of the most ingenious, if not the most
remarkable, books I have ever seen.

A T'ao is two or any number of volumes of a book wrapped in a
single cover. In this case it was two volumes. In the inside of
the cover there was a depression three inches square in which was
kept a piece of lead, wood or pasteboard, divided into fifteen
pieces as in the following illustration.

These blocks are all in pairs except one, which is a rhomboid.
They are all exactly proportional, having their sides either
half-inch, inch, inch and a half, or two inches in length.