Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1909-10-24

"OTHER day 1 visited rich chill
drens toy shop-not to buy any
thing; not to play "choos- -.
ms" but merely to look and to marvel. ftESf4s
Maybe I'd have bought toy or two, for kssiHI
l enormously fond of sure enough, EEyH
honest Injun toys, if thered been a single fAI
toy in the place priced at less than eight tA2
dollars. But there wasn't. Eight dollars Eyts5
was the minimum figure for the trhingest, 1Fs
inconsequentiaest sterling silver plated -
toy in the shebang. wasn't anything at
all made out of pewter, that Teller could
bend all out of shape when he got tired of
it. and what's the good of an unbendabe,
indestructible toy, anyhowO
One toy had this tag on it: $500
1t was funicular railway, all in silver and
Steel with locomotive Chat you could
make really and truly steam in) and cars
and bridges and trestes and things and
about fifty feet of track. l stood before
this for long time. Eight hundred dol
lars!
Why thought eight hundred dollars
was what folks used to pay when was
toy-enjoying boy, for a great big house
we'll big enough anyhow-for their fami-
lies to live in. And eight hundred dollars
exactly the bounty money that my Uncle LATE
got for joining the army in 1862 and he the hull
eight hundred home to his mother to pay off the
mortgage on the farm, and she had enough left
to buy set of horsehar furniture for the parlor and
WnaCnOL ana center taDle BLDG weighing twenty
six pounds and when Uncle LATE got back from the
Battle of Gettysburg. all shot up, and purity blue and
down in the mouth because he felt like he
count airth and not with his hide an tallow,
why
Well, anyhow, eight hundred seemed to me like
awful big price for toy. Some people, thought,
must get their money out of well, or a lake, or
something.
Then came upon an impressive looking, oblong
highly polished, black lacquered box, with lot of
long glass tubes and things that looked like those
terrifying retorts don't you dare touch EN- or
they'll explode and blow all up in the arb that
you in chemists laboratory, and long slender
bottles filled with deadly looking liquids and all
like that.
Well, this boxful of dangerous looking gear GER
tain1y did stump me. l couldn't imagine what in
the world it was doing in toyshop, even in rich
childrens toyshop. Must be mistake about its
being there, reflected. First, thought it must be
X-ray apparatus. Then it occurred to me-per-
haps the black lacquered box suggested ths-that it
really belonged in an undertaker's establishment
being probably, embalmng outfit If not that,
why, then maybe it had something to do with SUBJ
marine torpedo boats, abdominal surgery or per-
hapS it was
Pricing Soap-Bubble- Making Sets
WILL you be good enough" said to the pro-
prietor of the toyshop-he looked like rail-
road president, and hed just bowed out naughty
lady whose fifteen thousand dollar imported town
car throbbing at the curb, Twill you kindly tell
what this frightful, death dealing contraption is,
with the-er-dynamite and lyddite and other bot
tied bedvvlements SO carelessly packed and
posed?" I'd noticed that of the bottles was
labeled "Glycerin," which suggested explosives.
Why, that, snilingy replied the railroad pres
-