Page:The Chinese Boy and Girl.djvu/106

Rh creation of air currents. This principle is utilized in lanterns. In the top of these is a paper wheel attached to a cross-bar on the ends of which are suspended paper men and women together with animals of all kinds making a very interesting merry-go-round. These lantern-figures correspond to the sawyers, borers, blacksmiths, washers and others which twenty or more years ago were on top of the stove of every corner grocery or country post-office.

When we began the study of Chinese toys our first move was to call in a Chinese friend whom we thought we could trust, and who could buy toys at a very reasonable rate, and sent him out to purchase specimens of every variety of toys he could find in the city of Peking. We ordered him the first day to buy nothing but rattles, because the rattle is the first toy that attracts the attention of the child.

In the evening Mr. Hsin returned with a good-sized basket full of rattles. Some were tin in the form of small cylinders, with handles in which were small pebbles: others were shaped like pails; and others like cooking pots and pans.

Some of the most attractive were hollow wood balls, baskets, pails and bottles, gorgeously painted, with long handles, necks, or bails. The paint was soon transferred from the face of the toy to that of the first child that happened to play with it, which child was of course, our own little girl.

The most common rattles representing various kinds of fowls and animals known and unknown are made of clay. Others are in the form of fat little priests that make one