the
jumping-jack, the wooden sword, the whip and the doll,--all these are
household friends in the humblest American homes. But not so the frog
which jumps with a spring, the wooden hammers which fall alternately
on their wooden anvil by the simplest of contrivances, and the
horseman without legs, whose horse has a whistle instead of a tail.
How any one of these articles could be sold for a sou passed my
comprehension until I learned details so surprising as to throw this
one quite into the shade.

There are blousards whose whole lives are passed in carving these toys
from the wood of the linden tree, and daubing them with the most
flaming reds, the most glittering yellows, the most dazzling blues,
that ever colorist beheld. The toy whips with handles decorated with
gilt paper wrapped about them spirally are said to be exclusively made
by Israelites, but the ingenuity of the human mind has not devised an
explanation of this curious fact. The papier-mache sheep is one of
the most elaborately fashioned toys sold for a sou, and the mode of
making it is this: The workman takes old scraps of paper and mashes
them in water to a pulp: this he sticks around the inside of a rude
mould, which is in two parts, one for each side of the sheep. When the
two sides are moulded, he sticks them together and dips the whole in a
pot of white mucilaginous paint. When this coating is dry, he tattoos
the sheep according to his fancy, covers its back with a bit of
sheepskin, and ties a red string around its neck. And all this work
for a sou? is one's incredulous question. Why, our blousard would
think his fortune was made if he could get a sou for it. The retailer
in the Rue Mouffetard sells it for a sou: the man who made it would be
happy if he could sell it at the rate of eight sous the dozen, but,
like most other workers, he must deal with a middleman. No retailer
could take his stock off his hands in sufficient quantities: he must
sell to a wholesale dealer in the first place, and the wholesale
dealer sells to the little shopkeeper at eight sous the dozen. All
this work for half a sou, then! And when it is added that the workman
has to furnish the materials for his work besides, it really entitles
the toy to a niche in the realms of the marvelous. I have found my
eyes growing moist in New York as I listened to the tales of
sewing-girls who made coarse shirts at six cents apiece, and found the
thread, but such cases were exceptional, and