[Illustration: THE DEAR DELIGHTS OF PLAYING ALONE]
An Italian woman once asked me, "The American children—what do they employ as toys?"
I could only reply, "Almost anything; almost everything!"
When we are furthest from seeing the toy possibilities of a thing, they see it. I have among my treasures a libation cup and a ushabti figurine—votive offerings from the Temple of Osiris, at Abydos.
A short time ago a little boy friend of mine lighted upon them in their safe retreat. "What are these?" he inquired.
"They came from Egypt—" I began.
"Oh, really and truly?" he cried. "Did they come from the Egypt in the poem—
"'Where among the desert sands
Some deserted city stands,
There I'll come when I'm a man
With a camel caravan;
And in a corner find the toys
Of the old Egyptian boys'?"
He spent a happy hour playing with the libation cup and the ushabti— trophies of one of the most remarkable explorations of our era. I did not tell him what they were. He knew concerning them all he needed to know—that they could be "employed as toys." Perhaps the very tiniest of the "old Egyptian boys" had known only this, too.
"Little girls do not play with dolls in these days!" is a remark that has been made with great frequency of late years. Those of us who have many friends among little girls often wonder what is at the basis of this rumor. There have always been girls who did not care for dolls. In the old-fashioned story for girls there was invariably one such. In "Little Women," as we all recall, it was Jo. No doubt the persons who say that little girls no longer play with dolls count among their childish acquaintances a disproportionate number of Jos. Playing with dolls would seem to be too fundamentally little-girlish ever to fall into desuetude.