"THE LAST ONE!"
One group that attracted a great deal of attention represented a little newsboy, who is a well-known figure in Buffalo, selling his "last one" to a lady. The doll which won first prize was a copy of Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, and was of perfect proportion, even to the base on which it stood. Instead of a torch, she held in her hand an incandescent light.
Saturday was children's day, and all of that day the hall was filled with them. All the children's institutions had been given tickets of admission, and not one child missed the show. To them it must have been a glimpse into fairy-land. An East-Side free kindergarten teacher took the precaution of tying the children under her charge all together with a rope, after the fashion of a Swiss mother who passed through Buffalo a few years ago on her way to the far West, with her ten children tied together with a clothes-line. The children exclaimed over and admired the grown-up dolls, but not one was heard to wish for one for her very own.
"Wouldn't you like that nice doll for yours?" said an older sister to the little maid in her charge, pointing to a doll in a wonderful Worth gown.
"No, I would not," came the quick reply. "She's far too old. Do you think I want to be a grandmother?"
"They're just lovely," said one little girl, as she walked round the stage looking at the prize dolls; "but they're not nice to play with. I want a doll that will wash."
"Here is the doll I like best of all," said a brown-eyed maid, stopping before a two-year-old baby doll with curly hair and laughing black eyes.
"And I! And I too!" said half a dozen others, crowding closer. "She's just the doll you could cuddle and take comfort with."
An agent of Santa Claus was at the show on children's day. A poorly clad child was gazing wistfully at a table loaded with "every-day" dolls. "Which of those would you like best?" said a voice at her elbow, and there stood a stout gentleman looking down at her in the most friendly manner. "This, sir, if you please, sir," pointing to a doll in pink gingham. In a moment it was in her arms, and the gentleman was gone; but he was heard from at various tables, though no one could keep track of him very long; and owing to his kindness many children who never had a "boughten" doll before carried one home then. No one found out who he was, but one five-year-old, who hugged a flaxen-haired doll to her heart, said she "guessed he was Santa Claus's brother."