hop
occupied a corner, and seemed to literally overflow upon the sidewalks
of the two streets, so that care was needful in moving about to avoid
stumbling over the profuse array of objects which littered the way. A
group of old women were standing near, laughing and chattering in
toothless merriment over some mysterious cause of amusement, which I
grievously suspected to be myself, the apparition of a foreigner being
no doubt an uncommon one in that quarter. But the women of the shop,
having an eye to sales, were obsequiously polite to the stranger. I
engaged in conversation with the old woman, who proved quite
communicative, and set me off on a path of inquiry which yielded
information of curious interest.

"Voyez!" cried out the younger woman from behind the broad counter
open to the street, and spread with a literally innumerable variety of
articles--"Voyez! All one sou! your choice in the sale!"

To study the shop was to find many suggestions of the types of people
living in the surrounding buildings--alphabets and whistles for
children; playing-cards for gamesters; camphor cigarettes for
invalids; sewing-cases for work-girls; mirrors for coquettes; and toys
innumerable, "all one sou." In the grand shops on the fashionable
boulevards you may see the last new mode in toys--for no season goes
by in Paris without bringing some especial toy or toys to become "the
rage"--but in the Rue Mouffetard the toys are all classics. They have
been handed down from generation to generation precisely in the forms
you see them here. Babies who are now tottering grandfathers and
grandmothers played with the toys of the "boutique a un sou" in their
day, as the babies of the present do, and paid the same price for
them, in spite of the changes of time and the decreased purchasing
value of the son in most respects. I bought a large collection of
these toys purely as objects of curiosity, and it was really amazing
to see, when spread out on a table, what a collection I had gathered
for the incredible price of sixteen cents. Many of the toys would be
readily recognized as old acquaintances in America, but others, common
here for a hundred years past, I never saw at home. The articulated
monkey chasing his nose over the end of a stick; the wooden snake
undulating in a surprisingly life-like manner; the noisy "watchman's
rattle," which in our village was popularly supposed to be the
constant companion of the New York policeman on his beat;