The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1871-09-16
The Rationale Of Toys.

! Our pity has been often excited for poor
children who have no toys; might it not be
also sometimes reasonably called forth for
those children whose toys are too many and
too good? The poor children suffer be-
/ cause they have no material whereon to
exercise their imaginations, the poor little
creatures, even at that early stage of their
existence, enter upon the stagnation which
settles like a stultifying load on so many,
in whose monotonous life no light from the
region of the imagination breaks on the
daily routine of toll.
The other children suffer because they
have too many things to distract them, 80
that their imaginations find no ground to
rest and build upon. In their cradles they
have foretaste of the distracting whilr
and hurry of the busy world of which they
are probably destined to know SO much.
What happy thing for some nurseries
were kind of fairy to come and sweep off
half the contents of the toy drawers and
at the same time bar all possibility of re-
plenishing them. Imagine the result of
such fairy visit to some Of those elabo-
rate dolls houses, which presented to the
little ones replete with everything mag
Unable, is admired, rejoiced over, arranged,
and rearranged, for week-then forgot
| ten, left in dust and disorder. Once clear
ed irretrievably, of all but a few necessa-
ries of doll-life, we should soon see most
fertile resources of the imagination, the
most unlikely things metamorphosed by
the young into suitable doll-property, and
the real pleasure of the toy for the first
time realized. How should child derive
the same amount of happiness from hand
some whip ornamented and carved already,
as he would from whip whose handle he
had himself sought in the hedge, and then
cut, notched, scraped, or otherwise adorn-
ed in imitation of the silvermounted or
ivory carved whips of his elders. That the
stout stick, representative of his fathers
horse, on which he rides, bears but distant
resemblance to that animal, matters not
it has far more than the toy-shop horse,
which is of the wrong color; his horse is of
l
any color he will, and he can canter him
over every prairie and desert of earth or
fairyland.
The toy-shops, with their ingenious de-
vices for quenching the sparks of magma
ton in our children, bring me back with a
sense of refreshment to a nursery I once
heard of, where the one great plaything
was sand, which the wise mother had let
her children bring by bagsfull from the sea
to the town nursery. have always wish
ed could have known that nursery. Who
could doubt that it was a happy one?-
Whoever does must have had all knowledge
of play entirely spoiled by those elaborate
productions, most truly described as "not
playthings-unless the children can break
them up, and make real toys of the bits;'
toys, that is, which set no bounds to the
imagination, by any too definitely marked
assertion of what they are meant to be-
1t is thus that toys seemingly most made
quate will so adequately satisfy child
mind.
Is not the test of the value of a child S
toy the amount of construc tive or mag
NATIVE exercise which it calls forth? A
test which may possibly apply also to the
| toys of their elders.