The Child's Toys.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 16 April 1910, Page 4

The Child's Toys.

WHY THIO OLD THIXCiS AltH THE BEST. We dilute hooks and oJabora-te toys for children. hut nothing pleases tliem like the old, whether it he in honks or toys—rhymes and fairy tales that began when the world was new. toys cur antediluvian ancestors mi»;lit have played with. Klahorate toys entertain the elders more than they do the children. You cannot say they do either harm or good to children, lor tho little ones resolve them finally to their simplest- elements and play therewith most contentedly. Tho favourite toy of one small child was a hobbyhorse which, in tho course of time and much battering, lest its head and all its paint and tinsel. Last Christmas a solicitous aunt gave .the hoy a splendid new horse, gorgeously caparisoned—just the sort of tiling that wo stupid grown-ups think makes a lovely pro-sent. The first thing the hoy did to his aunt's gift was to knock its head off. Tho next to tear off every hit of harness and trimming, and when it was reduced to the barren and forlorn state of the former favourite he bestrode it and new plays happily all day with it. Her new doll entertains Susie or Jennie for a while; but wait, and she will be back again happily dressing her old rag baby in tho newcomer's clothes, and the la,tier will he taken to her bosom only when it has been battered about, and had the varnish or the wax rubbed off Tn an idle moment 1 was glancing over Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tales, meaning to read them to my boy some day, say fivo or sixyears hence, but for the present trying to get the thread of them to repeat them in language simple, enough for his three-year-old comprehension. "Read, mother; please read," he kept saying, as he leaned on my knee. So I began with the story of the Christmas (reo in the garret, whom the little mice thought so old because he was all dried up: how they loved to hear tho story of his one happy evening when he F-tood dressed up in the parlour and heard the story of "Klumpe-Ditmpe, who fell up the stairs and won the princess." All tho time tho three-year-old listened at-i'iitively. T.lie wr-ds of the Master writer wen.t. straight to his sold. He was enchanted. Now the fir tree has become stock in his childish store of allusioes. In spite of the floods of new books that are yearly poured forth, for his supposed pleasure, nothing goes so straight to the heart of a child as the old tale and tho old rhvnie— and yet we call them simple -things. Eternal vitality makes them one with time and life and all that is mysterious, and impossible to oxplain.