Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 89, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1910 — "LET’S PRETEND.” [ARTICLE]

"LET’S PRETEND.”

How * Prime Minister Fooled Empreaa Catharine of Russia, “Let’s pretend” la & delightful game In which adults are as prone as children to engage. The wise heads of the Treasury Department at Washington, In passing upon a question of tariff classification, recently determined that a doll is not a toy. With like official Ingenuity, the British government conaiders Ascensioh Island as a vessel of war, and as such is governed by the Admiralty; and the express companies long pretended that a typewriter orated is an agricultural implement, but that, tln-cased, it is a musical instrument The Czar of Russia, on a recent visit to the King of Italy, carried to the royal children a magnificent toy, consisting of a model Russian village populated by dolls dressed fn Russian clothes. The doors and windows of the houses open and shut; the shops are •quipped with counters and goods; the schools have desks and pupils; the barracks accommodate artillery, infantry and cavalry. The Czar personally helped the little prince and princesses set up the village;; and the fun of the thing and the satisfaction of the royal parents did not a little to bring about the present good feeling between the Russian and Italian courts, so long at . enmity. Did. the royal toy village recall to Nicholas the little game played on his ancestress, Catherine the Great, by her prime minister? During one of Sher journeys Potemkin arranged a series «f tableaux by which smiling cities and Tillages appeared at stated intervals. Houses and shops were made of petnt•d canvas, and dancers appropriately dressed played the part of a contented peasantry living happily among their fields. • The Imperial cortege having rotted on, the village with its Inhabit® was whipped up. hurried by roundabout roads sad set down a few stiles farther on, to confirm the opin-

ion of the empress that Russia was a land of ideal prosperity. Oftep, however, the “let’s pretead” of one generation is the accepted fact of to-morrow. Santa Claus driving his reindeer and hitching them to the tallest chimney on the roof Is not far removed from the veritable airship tying up at its elevated station; and children as well as their elders know that when schemes are well laid in advance, even “just pretending” circumstances are apt to fit in with them.—Youth’s Companion.