If all goes well, the eyes and the wig come next. The eyes are not made in this factory at all. They come from Germany, and it would probably give you a queer, scared feeling to see the making of them. Look into this long, dark room, and when your eyes are a little used to the strange shadowiness, you will see that down its sides there are rows of tables, before each of which sits a woman with a blue-flame gas lamp in front of her. At little distances are retorts of glowing molten glass, and each woman dips her short glass tube into the melted glass, and, keeping it soft by the help of that weird blue flame of the blowpipe jet, blows a little oblong globe which she colors white for the eyeball, and then upon it paints a pupil of blue, brown, or black, as the doll-makers may have ordered. The musical click which you hear all the time is the sharp stroke which breaks the finished and cooled eye from the glass rod, letting it drop into a box lined with cotton by her side. This boy coming out has been collecting them, and it makes us shiver to see those hundreds of eyes rolling uncannily at us from the bottom of his basket. Come away!
A wig for an inexpensive doll is an easy matter; the chosen strands of hair are laid along a double thread, which passes below one strand and above the next. This thread makes the “part,” and under it is stuck a bit of pasteboard by which the wig is fastened on. A quick-fingered French woman can turn out over a hundred dozen such wigs in a day. And with the wig dolly is made at last.
Her clothes, of course, are a separate matter, just as yours are; there are dolls’ shoemakers, and dolls’ dressmakers, and the elaborate completeness of dolly’s outfit depends only upon the price one is willing to pay.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York
WIG-MAKING
Irina’s Day on the Estates
Irina is a Russian who answers promptly if you ask her what Christmas she remembers best, “The one we spent on the estates.” But that may be because it was so unusual to be there at all in the winter. Christmas Eve is the great time in Russia, but Santa Claus does not come until evening and the day before Christmas being a fast-day is usually somewhat depressing.
Old Mashinka, who comes in to open the heavy, outer shutters, usually has some lively gossip to tell while she lets in the light. Perhaps wolves slipped into the courtyard in the night and were fighting with the watch-dogs; perhaps the snow has fallen again and is so deep that Ivan and the stablemen have been out since daybreak cutting new paths to the kitchens, stables, and farm buildings, and breaking out the roads. Or perhaps Dmitri, who moved yesterday into a new house, took with him a cock and hen, and this morning the cock refused to crow at dawn so that all the family are sure that evil fortune will enter the house with the new year. But on this morning she has no news to tell; she moves silently and slowly, for it is a fast-day.
Even Irina, who is always ready to run and jump, feels oppressed by the still, silent house. The dining room is desolate with its breakfastless table, usually so cosy with its steaming samovar. As a rule they are at this time in St. Petersburg where, though Irina stays quietly all day in an upper room, except when attending church services, she can at least look out upon all the coming and going on the river and the Nevski Prospect. But this year Andrei the steward is raising questions about the plans and locations for new stables and barns, so they are here where everything is depressingly still and silent, and upstairs her father and mother are praying in their rooms. So she puts on fur-lined boots, a long fur coat with deep collar, and a fur cap which comes well down over the forehead, and once outside the house finds herself in the thick forest. Further on she comes to a frozen river, and fast-days and solemn services are all forgotten, for there are her two fur-wrapped brothers busy with a little sledge. The red scarves of the boys are taken for guiding reins, and far along the ice for two hours or more she drives her team. They have passed beyond the forest and out upon the steppes, where for miles ahead no trees are to be seen except where willows mark the curve of the river, or a few stunted saplings show black against the snow. On one side is a long, low sheepfold belonging to Irina’s father, and out comes the shepherd with a clamor of dogs. He has no chairs, so he throws down three heaps of clean straw for the children to sit on; and he, too, forgets that it is a fast-day as he reaches cakes of dark brown bread from a shelf below the tiny square window, and pours for them cups of goats’ milk. Black crust and all—it goes quickly, and then they rest and stroke the half-tamed sheep that come to nibble the straw while the shepherd tells the children stories. He cannot read, to be sure, but when he was a boy his old grandmother told them to him. Perhaps, because it is the Christmas season, he tells them of the old woman whom the Russians call Babouscka and the Italians Befana. Irina’s favorite is one that would remind you of Cinderella, although the fairy godmother is much more like an old witch; and as the children start off for home they wonder a little fearfully if this forest is not very like the one in the shepherd’s story.