Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 September 1893 — ARE TOYS TOO GOOD? [ARTICLE]

ARE TOYS TOO GOOD?

A Suggestion Th»t (he Toys of Our ChUdhood Were Better, Men are, after all, only overgrown children. Give your little boy money, and the sweetshop and the toyshop will, too probably,-eoiipse the mute appeal of the missionary box. And, when the boy grows up, physically, if his income also grows, he will spend at sweetshop and toyshop Instead of acid drops he will purchase rare wines and order elaborate dinners; the race game and the clockwork boat will expand the real thoroughbreds and a steam yacht. Do wo really outgrow the taste for sweets and toys? Some of us never have it; some lose It by over-indulg-ence during youth. But to the temperate person, whose pocket money has always been limited, are toys and sweets ever wholly without attractions? He is ashamed to be seen openly purchasing sugared almonds and chocolate creams, and looking in vain longing at lead soldiers and clockwork trains; but the old delight is not dead. Even a humble box of bricks, that best of toys, unrolls before his mental vision a prospect of houses, fortresses, harbors, railway stations, zoological gardens, and all the ingenious constructions of the young architect, half blocks and half “make-believe.” When I look into the toy-shop windows, as I usually do, it seems to me that children are losing the poetic imagination that transformed a dingy play room into a fairyland. Toys are becoming daily more elaborate. more realistic; less room is left for fiction and romance. Lead soldiers are no longer flat simulacra of humanity, but big, broad, solid and expansive. Cavalrymen sit plumply astride bulging horses; artillery trains, pontoon trains, complete in every detail, replace the improvised substitutes in which I once reveled. Yet, can the model 81-ton gun give as much satisfaction to the boyish possessor as the fortress artillery I used to contrive out of an old brass cannon, three bricks and the tender of a tin train?—The Sketch.