Arizona weekly journal-miner., 1892-02-10
HISTORY OF DOLLS.
Their Manufacture Has Kept Pace with
 Ctxilix.tianss praEress-

Their Manufacture Has Kept Pace with
 Civilizations PrsEress-
 Only those who have been through 1t all for themselves can understand tho broad. deep place that the doll holds tn the babys heart. and how the childish imagination beautiiies it, or reprodnces by its means all the pleasures and sor- rows of inlantilo existence. George Eliot appreciated this last feeling when she made poor little Maggie Tullivei find the outlet for her ragcs by driving nails into hairless wooden skull.
 Then, too. the doll Is significant, not only for its wide and curious history. but because in the great progress of civilization 1t has kept pace with moro serious things, until today its evolu. ton is an event to be proud of. Not that 1t has ever been treated lightly as a thing of no account. On the con- trary, Tacitus in his time told the Ger mans that far back in gray intiquity their ancestors were in the habit of burying with the dead the objects dear est to them, and subsequent excava- tions made at Nuremburg during the last century have brought to light a variable dolls house and various clay figures, proved to be the playthings of the little ancient Germans. whose fail ings and feelings were not, after all, very different from those of the present small American
 It was about 800 A. D. that the inn portance of the doll was fully demon strated by rigorous and orthodox per secution carried on against it in the church. To play with one was strictly forbidden, since, as ',children of the devil" they were destructive to the soul, and all those ancient customs In which they had any part-such as the sacrificing of doll to Venus on the morning of marriage to indicate that the bride had put away childish things were likewise strictly prohibited. But even this heroic treatment failed to accomplish its object or stifie the progressive instinct in the disgraced ones, for when art and wealth began to center in the French capital, those dol lies of aristocratic pretentions aban- doned their more plebeian companions, promptly migrated from Germany and in due course became thorough Pari- sians from tie top of their fuzzy perukes to the pointed toes of their tiny slip pers. And then 1t was that the really serious destiny of the doll began. In the absence of fashion journals, and limited by difficulties in transportation, the French modiste turned in his des- pair to this little lay figure.
 Gowned in the most ravishing cos tune then la mode, he sent her out into the distant provinces to excite imi- tation and inculcate extravaganza in all womankind. As an oatcome of | this, tho most luxurious danes had models made after their own measure ments and sent to town to be fitted !; and in this way the French doll came to take precedence over all other dolls, and to mean even now a thing of beauty and word of power.
 From a graver point of view, Ger man writer has suggested that the doll may have real psychical importance. He advances the theory that by the way a child handles, caresses, cares for or negiects it, correct idea may be gathered of the growth of character, and in corroboration of this he calls at-
 tention to the fact that the doll ismost
 popular in those countries where the
 domestic and maternal instinct is the
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