Part 13

If she missed, another girl took up what were left, scattered them, snapped them, took them up, and so on until one or another got the most of the pebbles and thus won the game. Our little friend was reminded of another and she called out:

"The cow's eye."

Immediately the girls all sat down in a ring and put their feet together in the centre. Then one of their number repeated the following rhyme, tapping a foot with each accented syllable.

One, two, three, and an old cow's eye, When a cow's eye's blind she'll surely die. A piece of skin and a melon too, If you have money I'll sell to you, But if you're without, I'll put you out.

The foot on which her finger happened to rest when she said "out" was excluded from the ring. Again she repeated the rhyme excluding a foot with each repetition till all but one were out.

Up to this point all the children were in a nervous quiver waiting to see which foot would be left, but now the fun began, for they took the shoe off and every one slapped that unfortunate foot. This was done with good-natured vigor but without intention to hurt. It was amusing to see the children squirm as they neared the end of the game.

This game finished, the little girl called out:

"Pat your hands and knees."

The girls sat down in pairs and, after the style of "Bean Porridge Hot," clapped hands to the following rhyme:

Pat your hands and knees, On January first, The old lady likes to go a sightseeing most. Pat your hands and knees, On February second, The old lady likes a piece of candy it is reckoned. Pat your hands and knees, On March the third, The old lady likes a Canton pipe I have heard. Pat your hands and knees, On April fourth, The old lady likes bony fish from the north. Pat your hands and knees, The fifth of May, The old lady likes sweet potatoes every day. Pat your hands and knees, The sixth of June, The old lady eats fat pork with a spoon. Pat your hands and knees, The seventh of July, The old lady likes to eat a fat chicken pie. Pat your hands and knees, On August eight, The old lady likes to see the lotus flowers straight. Pat your hands and knees, September nine, The old lady likes to drink good hot wine. Pat your hands and knees, October ten,

The old lady, you and I, may meet hope again.

This we afterwards discovered is very widely known throughout the north of China.

The foregoing are a few of the games played by the children in Peking. In that one city we have collected more than seventy-five different games, and have no reason to believe we have secured even a small proportion of what are played there. Games played in Central and South China are different, partly because of climatic conditions, partly because of the character of the people. There, as here, the games of children are but reproductions of the employments of their parents. They play at farming, carpentry, house-keeping, storekeeping, or whatever employments their parents happen to be engaged in. Indeed, in addition to the games common to a larger part of the country, there are many which are local, and depend upon the employment of the parents or the people.

THE TOYS CHILDREN PLAY WITH

One day while sitting at table, with our little girl, nineteen months old, on her mother's knee near by, we picked up her rubber doll and began to whip it violently. The child first looked frightened, then severe, then burst into tears and plead with her mother not to "let papa whip dolly."

Few people realize how much toys become a part of the life of the children who play with them. They are often looked upon as nothing more than "playthings for children." This is a very narrow view of their uses and relationships. There is a philosophy underlying the production of toys as old as the world and as broad as life, a philosophy which, until recent years, has been little studied and cultivated.

Playthings are as necessary a constituent of human life as food or medicine, and contribute in a like manner to the health and development of the race. Like the science of cooking and healing, the business of toy-making has been driven by the stern teacher, necessity, to a rapid self-development for the general good of the little men and women in whose interests they are made.

They are the tools with which children ply their trades; the instruments with which they carry on their professions; the goods which they buy and sell in their business, and the paraphernalia with which they conduct their toy society. They are more than this. They are the animals which serve them, the associates who entertain them, the children who comfort them and bring joy to the mimic home.

Toys are nature's first teachers. The child with his little shovels, spades and hoes, learns his first lessons in agriculture; with his hammer and nails, he gets his first lessons in the various trades; and the bias of the life of many a child of larger growth has come from the toys with which he played. Into his flower garden the father of Linnaeus introduced his son during his infancy, and "this little garden undoubtedly created that taste in the child which afterwards made him the first botanist and naturalist of his age, if not of his race."

No experiments in any chemical laboratory will excite more wonder or be carried on with more interest, than those which the boy performs with his pipe and basin of soapy water. The little girl's mud pies and other sham confectionery furnish her first lessons in the art of preparing food. Her toy dinners and playhouse teas offer her the first experiences in the entertainment of guests. With her dolls, the domestic relations and affections.

No science has ever originated and been carried to any degree of perfection in Asia. There is no reason why this statement should cause the noses of Europeans and Americans to twitch in derision and pride, for there is another fact equally momentous in favor of the Asiatics,--viz., no religion that originated outside of Asia has ever been carried to any degree of perfection.

The above facts will indicate that we need not hope to find the business of toy-making, or the science of child-education in a very advanced state in China--the most Asiatic country of Asia. Child's play and toy-making have been organized into a business and a science in Europe, as astronomy, which had been studied so long in Asia, was developed into a science by the Greeks. And so we find that what is taught in the kindergarten of the West is learned in the streets of the East; and the toys which are manufactured in great Occidental business establishments, are made by poor women in Oriental homes, and the same mistakes are made by the one as by the other.

The same whistle by which the cock crows, enables the dog to bark, the baby to cry, the horse to neigh, the sheep to bleat and the cow to low, just as in our own rubber goods. The same end is accomplished in the one case as in the other. The two, three or twenty cash doll does for the Chinese girl what the two, three or twenty dollar one does for her antipodal sister,--develops the instinct of motherhood, besides standing a greater amount of rough handling. Nevertheless it usually comes to the same deplorable end, departing this world, bereft of its arms and legs, without going through the tedious process of a surgical operation.

Chinese toys are less varied, less complicated, less true to the original, and less expensive than those of the West,--more perhaps like the toys of a century or two ago. Nevertheless they are toys, and in the hands of boys and girls, the drum goes "rub-a-dub," the horn "toots," and the whistle squeaks. The "gingham dog and calico cat," besides a score of other animals more nearly related to the soil of their native place--being made of clay--express themselves in the language of the particular whistle which happens to have been placed within them. All this is to the entire satisfaction of "little Miss Muffet" and "little boy Blue," just as they do in other lands.

When the children grow older they have tops to spin that whistle as good a whistle, and buzzers to buzz that buzz as good a buzz, and music balls to roll, and music carts to pull, that emit sounds as much to their satisfaction, as anything that ministered to the childish tastes of our grandfathers; and these become as much a part of their business and their life as if they were living, talking beings. Furthermore, their dolls are as much their children as they themselves are the offspring of their parents.

Chinese toys embrace only those which involve no intricate scientific principles. The music boxes of the West are unknown in China except as they are imported. The Chinese know nothing about dolls which open and shut their eyes, simple as this principle is, nor of toys which are self-propelling by some mysterious spring secreted within, because, forsooth, they know nothing about making the spring.

There are some principles, however, which, though they may not understand, they are nevertheless able to utilize; such, for instance, as the expansion of air by heat, and the creation of air currents. This principle is utilized in lanterns. In the top of these is a paper wheel attached to a cross-bar on the ends of which are suspended paper men and women together with animals of all kinds making a very interesting merry-go-round. These lantern-figures correspond to the sawyers, borers, blacksmiths, washers and others which twenty or more years ago were on top of the stove of every corner grocery or country post-office.

When we began the study of Chinese toys our first move was to call in a Chinese friend whom we thought we could trust, and who could buy toys at a very reasonable rate, and sent him out to purchase specimens of every variety of toys he could find in the city of Peking. We ordered him the first day to buy nothing but rattles, because the rattle is the first toy that attracts the attention of the child.