. This
was what the boy needed,--something to appeal to that machine-loving
disposition which nature had given him, and Budge and Toddy were never
more curious to know "what made the wheels go round" than was little
Tsai Tien. He played with them as toys until overcome by curiosity,
when, like many another child, he tore them apart and discovered the
secret spring. This was as much of a revelation to the eunuchs as to
the child, and they went and bought other toys of a more curious
pattern, and a more intricate design, and it was not long until, at the
instigation of the enterprising Dane, the toy-shops of Europe were
manufacturing playthings specially designed to please the almond-eyed
baby Emperor in the yellow-tiled palace in Peking.

As the child grew the business of the Dane shopkeeper increased. His
stock became larger and more varied, and Tsai Tien continued to be a
profitable customer. There were music boxes and music carts--real music
carts, not like those from the Chinese shops,--trains of cars, wheeled
boats, striking clocks and Swiss watches which, when the stem was
pulled, would strike the hour or half or quarter, and all these were
bought in turn by the eunuchs and taken into the palace. As the Emperor
grew to boyhood the Danish shopkeeper supplied toys suitable to his
years from his inexhaustible shelves, until all the most intricate and
wonderful toys of Europe, suitable for a boy, had passed through the
hands of Kuang Hsu,--"continued brilliancy," as his name implied--and
he seemed to be making good the meaning of his name.

We would not lead any one to believe that Kuang Hsu was an ideal child.
He was not. If we may credit the reports that came from the palace in
those days, he had a temper of his own. If he were denied anything he
wanted, he would lie down on his baby back on the dirty ground and kick
and scream and literally "raise the dust" until he got it. My wife
tells me that not infrequently when she called at the Chinese homes,
and they set before her a dish of which she was especially fond, and
she had eaten of it as much as she thought she ought, the ladies would
ask in a good-natured way in reply to some of her remarks about her
voracious appetite, "Shall we get down and knock our heads on the
floor, and beg you not to eat too much, and make yourself sick, like
the eunuchs do to the Emperor?" There is nothing to wonder at that
Kuang Hsu, without parental restraint, and fawned upon by cringi