When we are furthest from seeing the toy possibilities of a thing, they
see it. I have among my treasures a libation cup and a _ushabti_
figurine--votive offerings from the Temple of Osiris, at Abydos.
A short time ago a little boy friend of mine lighted upon them in their
safe retreat. "What are these?" he inquired.
"They came from Egypt--" I began.
"Oh, _really_ and _truly_?" he cried. "_Did_ they come from the Egypt in
the poem--
"'Where among the desert sands
Some deserted city stands,
There I'll come when I'm a man
With a camel caravan;
And in a corner find the toys
Of the old Egyptian boys'?"
He spent a happy hour playing with the libation cup and the _ushabti_--
trophies of one of the most remarkable explorations of our era. I did
not tell him what they were. He knew concerning them all he needed to
know--that they could be "employed as toys." Perhaps the very tiniest of
the "old Egyptian boys" had known only this, too.
"Little girls do not play with dolls in these days!" is a remark that
has been made with great frequency of late years. Those of us who have
many friends among little girls often wonder what is at the basis of
this rumor. There have always been girls who did not care for dolls. In
the old-fashioned story for girls there was invariably one such. In
"Little Women," as we all recall, it was Jo. No doubt the persons who
say that little girls no longer play with dolls count among their
childish acquaintances a disproportionate number of Jos. Playing with
dolls would seem to be too fundamentally little-girlish ever to fall
into desuetude.
"Girls, as well as boys, play with dogs in these days!" is another
plaintive cry we often hear. But were there ever days when this was not
the case? From that far-off day when Iseult "had always a little brachet
with her that Tristram gave her the first time that ever she came into
Cornwell," to the time when Dora cuddled Jip, even down to our own day,
when the heroine of "Queed" walks forth with her Behemoth, girls both in
fact and in fiction have played with dogs; played with them no less than
boys. This proclivity on the part of the little girls of our Nation is
not distinctively American, nor especially childish, nor particularly
girl-like; it is merely human.
In few activities do the children of our Nation reveal what we call the
"American sense of humor" so clearly as in their play. Slight ills, and
even serious misfortunes, they instinctively endeavor to lift and carry
with a laugh. It would be difficult to surpass the gay heroism to which
they sometimes attain.
Most of us remember the little hunchbacked boy in "Little Men" who, when
the children played "menagerie," chose the part of the dromedary.
"Because," he explained, "I have a hump on my back!"
Among my acquaintances there is a little girl who is blind. One day I
invited her to go picnicking with a party of normal children, one of
whom was her elder sister. She was accustomed to the company of children
who could see, and she showed a ready disposition to join in the games
of the other picnickers. Her sister stayed close beside her and guarded
and guided her.
"Let's play blind man's buff," one of the children heedlessly suggested
after a long course of "drop-the-handkerchief."
The other children with seeing eyes instantly looked at the child who
was sightless, and whispered, "Ssh! You'll hurt her feelings!"
But the little blind girl scrambled eagerly to her feet. "Yes," she
said, brightly; "let's play blind man's buff! _I_ can be 'It' _all_ the
time!"
There is a phrase that has been very widely adopted by Americans.
Scarcely one of us but uses it--"playing the game." Our highest
commendation of a man or a woman has come to be, "He plays the game," or
"She plays the game." Another phrase, often upon our lips, is "according
to the rules of the game." We Americans talk of the most sacred things
of life in the vocabulary of children at play. May not this be because
the children of our Nation play so well; so much better than we grown-
ups do anything?