Mundane Musings

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 232, 20 December 1927, Page 5

Mundane Musings

Toy-Time “Joan has thirty dolls,” said her mother proudly. “She's kept them ever since she was three years old, and really they’re all quite decent even now.” I secretly felt sorry for Joan—she is only seven—and in a queer way a little sorry for the thirty dolls. They must j be such unkissed, unloved, unhugged dollies to have remained respectable so | long! I have in mind another little girl who j owns just one doll, which she calls by ' the festive name of “Holly,” and which has been her cherished baby for over two years. In the beginning Holly was quite a nice doll. It had an engaging smile upon its large pink face, and obediently said “Mamma” when one bent its middle. Now Holly has been loved not -wisely but too well. More than once she has had the stuffing knocked out of her “innards” (a sure sign of affection), and her original “voice-box” has long since been replaced. At rare intervals her composition countenance is “washed” with butter, and new roses are put into her cheeks with the aid of cochineal. But, alas! her nose is damaged beyond hope, and although an effort was once made to repair it with a dab of vanishing cream and a pow-der-puff, it remains brown and battered. A LITTLE MOTHER “What a nideous object!” tactlessly cried a great-aunt, when she saw Holly arrayed for an airing. “Surely your mother isn’t going to let you take • out a doll like that!” “It isn’t a doll,” came the tearfully | indignant reply. “It’s a dear little j baby, and it’s only one hour old!” j The other day I watched yet another ; small girl playing rather listlessly with a splendid doll’s house and a model

stove complete with pots and pans. It made me think of my own childhood. The nearest approach to a doll’s house I ever possessed was an old oaken tea-caddy which had belonged to my grandmother. The caddy was divided into two compartments, and my childish imagination converted it into a haunted inn. In one of the compartments I made a gory splash of red ink to represent a blodstain, and when I’d completed the gruesome details with a penny toy skeleton which jerked about on wires my ghoulish satisfaction was complete. I can't remember being fond of a really presentable plaything. In fact, the only truly elegant toy I ever had was a large fair-haired doll dressed in red velvet. This doll, which had been given to me by an uncle, I privately loathed with a deadly loathing, although at times I made a polite and dutiful pretence of playing with it. AWAY WITH “BEST” TOYS

It is a libel to say the modern child lacks imagination, but it is a fact that many children suffer from a surfeit of toys. Give a little girl one Dismal Desmond and a couple of cuddlesome dolls and she will probably adore them; but if she has a whole playbox full of gollies and Sambos, woolly lambs and walkytalky dolls, how can she pin her love to one? So none of them is endowed with life. They remain just* toys. Mercifully, “best” toys are almost abolished. Yet I do know one much-to-be-pitied little girl who has a beautifully dressed doll with which she is only allowed to play on special occasions or to take out of doors. She also lias a bookcase full of unthumbed childrens’ books which she is only permitted to look at when visitors come. It is diabolical. Toy-time is so fleeting, and is so exquisite while it lasts, that it is wicked to withold any of its treasures. > Many an irritatingly phlegmatic young man or woman, incapable of expressing or feeling enthusiasm on any subject, is the pitiable result of too many toys in childhood, and indeed of too many “treats” of all kinds. Their powers of being thrilled about

anything died an early death in an expensively stocked nursery.