Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland
page 79 of 268 (29%)
page 79 of 268 (29%)
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pattern, and a more intricate design, and it was not long until,
at the instigation of the enterprising Dane, the toy-shops of Europe were manufacturing playthings specially designed to please the almond-eyed baby Emperor in the yellow-tiled palace in Peking. As the child grew the business of the Dane shopkeeper increased. His stock became larger and more varied, and Tsai Tien continued to be a profitable customer. There were music boxes and music carts--real music carts, not like those from the Chinese shops,--trains of cars, wheeled boats, striking clocks and Swiss watches which, when the stem was pulled, would strike the hour or half or quarter, and all these were bought in turn by the eunuchs and taken into the palace. As the Emperor grew to boyhood the Danish shopkeeper supplied toys suitable to his years from his inexhaustible shelves, until all the most intricate and wonderful toys of Europe, suitable for a boy, had passed through the hands of Kuang Hsu,--"continued brilliancy," as his name implied--and he seemed to be making good the meaning of his name. We would not lead any one to believe that Kuang Hsu was an ideal child. He was not. If we may credit the reports that came from the palace in those days, he had a temper of his own. If he were denied anything he wanted, he would lie down on his baby back on the dirty ground and kick and scream and literally "raise the dust" until he got it. My wife tells me that not infrequently when she called at the Chinese homes, and they set before her a dish of which she was especially fond, and she had eaten of it as much as she thought she ought, the ladies would ask in a good-natured way in reply to some of her remarks about her |
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