TOYLAND TO-DAY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1317, 21 December 1911, Page 9

TOYLAND TO-DAY.

(By Jenny Wren.)

, ; .FAR BRIGHTER THAN PAINTED.

It is a complicated and delicate task to,be.a parent in these days, particularly at Christmas .time, and it is no wonder that so many parents wear a worried air when visiting the toyshops, followed—or rather preceded—by three or four children in an anticipatory, but critical, frame of mind.

Time was, some years ago, when it was considered a good thing for a child to cultivate his imagination with but a few toys, and those of the simplest description. Hasn't the story been told to us, and haven't lvlo ;tpld'./i.t to.the tyrants of to-day, of Ruskin's; mother, was said to have allowed. he£ ; . little;,' : 6on only a bunch of keys as.a-'plaything, on the plea that his imagination , would thereby have free play, whereas the. - possession of a number of toys would blunt his imagination? ;\ '*

Life would .really not be ;worth. living if: that plan-were .-.followed, today. one thing.-it'/has' ; much-; more complicated an\ affair than it was twenty years ago that it has-unavoidably played its part upon the nature of the child of to-day, It is an all-questioning age, and, if wo have gained a larger measure of liberty to question and analyse, so must the child have more liberty. Probably it is for that reason that there aro to be seen so many mechanical toys—"practical" affairs that are £mall models of the things that are so much a ;part of .our .daily life—trains, motors, trams,..motor,,, launches,, water-mills— ovoi-ything -tllat is-'in tho least - degreo scientific. How many times does .one come across Noah's Ark in all the shops one might traverse in this city?—and if one did come across them, what proportion of all the varieties of other toys would they bear .to them? A very small one, indeed, .it'-might safely be answered. Disgusted, aunts and ' uncles, . and parents, too, havo often complained that when , they have given the children mechanical toys they have, in the course of timo sometimes a very short pulled . them. to.-pieces, .and the toy is but a glory of the past. It is annoying, decidedly, but, after all, it has served its purpose." Very seldom has tho motivo for dismembering it been destructive,. ' but merely the great desiro to "explore the hidden mystery—"to see the wheels go round." It is just the same desiro that has possessed the subtlest minds of the century —the desiro to get at the motivo force of the universe, and find .there-"what makes the -wheels go round." Only in the one case it is. crudo-and embryonic, and, in tho other, It has . pierced a little of the mystery. As" a writer in an English paper has said,, science, has invaded the toy-shops, and you cannot drive her out with any rhetorical pitchfork. She is a protagonist in life's-tragical comedy to-day, and has a right to "make herself small" and abide in the.microcosm of toys, symbols of the outer world's pursuits as they are, essentially. As timo goes on she will fill the counters with-strange new toystoys as strange and new as the poems of tho great poet that is to be, a lyrical or evon an epic -variant of Mr.- H. G-Wells.