explaining my meaning, I should
like to say a few words too. I have spent most of my life among the
poor, as I have told you before, and I have often thought that whoever
invented toys must have meant them first of all for the poor, more
particularly the poor little children who live in great cities. Now,
there is an old proverb, I often heard my old master repeat, that 'All
work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,' and he said it was the truest
word ever spoken. And if the better-off children want a little play to
liven up their days, when they are fed with plenty of good food, and
live in pure air, their hardest work being book lessons, what must poor
children do, who very often earn their very scanty living from the
cradle almost? Our good friend, the Teapot, has told us how the sight of
a halfpenny toy will bring such delight to little dim eyes, and skinny
faces, as must be pleasant to see; so I for one say with all my might,
'Prosperity, and plenty of it, to the cheap toys!'"

The Humming Top was quite disgusted with this long discussion, and
pooh-poohed it all as very low; but the number of votes was against him,
so with an offended roll round, he took up the thread of his story.

"Well, there is no accounting for tastes, and so I will say no more,
only that I have been brought up so entirely among people of the better
classes, that I cannot say much on any other subject. I told you before
that I lay for some time unsold, on account of the highness of my price,
and during that time made acquaintance with many sets of
companions,--dolls, boxes of soldiers, and various others. At last, to
my great joy, I was selected by a lady for her little daughter, and
taken home to a very nice large house in Russell Square.

"Little Mary was an only child, and was therefore the idol of her
parents; but, although she was much indulged, she was not by any means a
spoiled child. Used as she had been from her cradle to the companionship
of much older persons, she was a quiet, well-behaved little damsel
enough. Her father and mother were not at all young, and having neither
brothers nor sisters to play with, Mary naturally knew and felt little
of the riotous gaiety of a child. The nursery was as tidy and as neatly
arranged as any room in that handsome but formal house, and the _litter_
of playthings was not much known there in those days. Mary had one or
two dolls, very smartly dressed, but the prim little damsel played with
them i