If Paterfamilias wishes for a new sensation, let him provide himself with a big basket and follow me. It will try his dignity, perhaps, to be seen struggling amid a mob of children; but, after all, he will not get half as much put out as in the crush-room of the Opera, and I promise him more thorough delight, far brighter eyes, and more genuine laughter than he will meet with there. Say it is three o’clock in the afternoon and on a seasonable December day when our cab drives up to the German Fair in Regent Street. Was there ever such a crowd before of merry little feet all pattering and pushing along the entrance-hall lined with Christmas-trees? Paterfamilias perhaps has not forgotten that cry of “Eureka!” the ten thousand gave when they first caught sight of the sea; but we question if it was half as hearty as the joyous “Oh!” that burst from the mouths of a hundred “terrible Turks,” as they swarm into the glittering hall of the German Fair.
Twice in our lives toys make themselves known to us as great facts. In youth, when we play with them and smash them ourselves, and in middle age, when we do it by deputy in the persons of our own children; and, possibly, if you ask Paterfamilias, he will tell you that he enjoys them the second time more than the first—for then there are more to smash, and more to laugh and enjoy. But, if a man has any heart in him, how must he delight to see live hundred urchins all boiling over with pleasure, whilst five hundred mammas and papas are enjoying their happiness.
In my young days—when George IV. was king—toys were toys, and youngsters were obliged to use them economically; but now there is no such necessity, for here we are in a room where it is impossible to spend more than a penny at a time. I can get anything for a penny—from a capital yard measure to a soup tureen—and, as I am alive! there is Paterfamilias with his basket half-full already. He has a railroad that moves, a duck that swims, a trumpet that blows, a doll that cries, a perambulator that runs, and a monkey that jumps over a pole, and he has only got rid of sixpence! It becomes absolutely absurd to have so much for your money, and how he will manage to spend the sovereign he designs is to me a mystery. All around him urchins are busy. “I’ve had one of those, and two of those, and three of these, and four of those.” Why it reminds us of Punch’s satiated schoolboy settling his reckoning in the cake-shop, only here the boy has his cakes and toys still to enjoy. But there is a sixpenny and a shilling counter not far off, and, interspersed amid the meaner gew-gaws, toys that rise to the rank of real works of art.
