THE TOYS TO HAVE 2

Category: The Toys To Have

(But I was nearly forgetting to tell this, that all the thicker and
larger of these boards have holes bored through them. At about every
four inches is a hole, a little larger than an ordinary gimlet hole.
These holes have their uses, as I will tell later, but now let me get on
to the box of bricks.)

This, again, wasn't a toy-shop acquisition. It came to us by gift from
two generous friends, unhappily growing up and very tall at that; and
they had it from parents who were one of several families who shared in
the benefit of a Good Uncle. I know nothing certainly of this man except
that he was a Radford of Plymouth. I have never learned nor cared to
learn of his commoner occupations, but certainly he was one of those
shining and distinguished uncles that tower up at times above the common
levels of humanity. At times, when we consider our derived and
undeserved share of his inheritance and count the joys it gives us, we
have projected half in jest and half in earnest the putting together of
a little exemplary book upon the subject of such exceptional men:
Celebrated Uncles, it should be called; and it should stir up all who
read it to some striving at least towards the glories of the avuncular
crown. What this great benefactor did was to engage a deserving
unemployed carpenter through an entire winter making big boxes of wooden
bricks for the almost innumerable nephews and nieces with which an
appreciative circle of brothers and sisters had blessed him. There are
whole bricks 4-1/2 inches x 2-1/4 x 1-1/8; and there are quarters--
called by those previous owners (who have now ascended to, we hope but
scarcely believe, a happier life near the ceiling) "piggys." You note
how these sizes fit into the sizes of the boards, and of each size--we
have never counted them, but we must have hundreds. We can pave a dozen
square yards of floor with them.

How utterly we despise the silly little bricks of the toyshops! They are
too small to make a decent home for even the poorest lead soldiers, even
if there were hundreds of them, and there are never enough, never nearly
enough; even if you take one at a time and lay it down and say, "This is
a house," even then there are not enough. We see rich people, rich
people out of motor cars, rich people beyond the dreams of avarice,
going into toyshops and buying these skimpy, sickly, ridiculous pseudo-
boxes of bricklets, because they do not know what to ask for, and the
toyshops are just the merciless mercenary enemies of youth and happiness
--so far, that is, as bricks are concerned. Their unfortunate under-
parented offspring mess about with these gifts, and don't make very much
of them, and put them away; and you see their consequences in after life
in the weakly-conceived villas and silly suburbs that people have built
all round big cities. Such poor under-nourished nurseries must needs
fall back upon the Encyclopedia Britannica, and even that is becoming
flexible on India paper! But our box of bricks almost satisfies. With
our box of bricks we can scheme and build, all three of us, for the best
part of the hour, and still have more bricks in the box.

So much now for the bricks. I will tell later how we use cartridge paper
and cardboard and other things to help in our and of the decorative make
of plasticine. Of course, it goes without saying that we despise those
foolish, expensive, made-up wooden and pasteboard castles that are sold
in shops--playing with them is like playing with somebody else's dead
game in a state of rigor mortis. Let me now say a little about toy
soldiers and the world to which they belong. Toy soldiers used to be
flat, small creatures in my own boyhood, in comparison with the
magnificent beings one can buy to-day. There has been an enormous
improvement in our national physique in this respect. Now they stand
nearly two inches high and look you broadly in the face, and they have
the movable arms and alert intelligence of scientifically exercised men.
You get five of them mounted or nine afoot in a box for a small price.
We three like those of British manufacture best; other makes are of
incompatible sizes, and we have a rule that saves much trouble, that all
red coats belong to G. P. W., and all other colored coats to F. R. W.,
all gifts, bequests, and accidents notwithstanding. Also we have
sailors; but, since there are no red-coated sailors, blue counts as red.


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