a 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