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Updated: June 9, 2025
Text-books have gone out of fashion. The next generation will not see any antique furniture: it will all lie in a hopelessly unglued state, separated into its elements. There will not be any china tea-sets, all broken in the last dish-washing. There may be a few books in loose bindings and faded covers, and a few works of art in frames that furnace-heat has set sadly awry.
The sun shines down brightly, and the frosty air is fall of gladness; for Santa Claus, with his untold wonders, has come and gone. Ecstasies over dolls and transports over tea-sets, screams of delight at hobby-horses and enthusiastic exclamations at humming-tops, have passed. Paint-boxes and writing-desks, leaden soldiers and tin trumpets, at last, are reduced to blissful matters of course.
And to go into the play-house, and have the handling of the dolls, the tea-sets, and toys, was employment as charming as it was new. The nursery was in the cabin of Mammy Grace, which was situated a few steps from the family mansion, and was distinguished from the log-huts of the other slaves, by having brick walls and two rooms.
They were strange ornaments to bring on a sea voyage china pugs, tea-sets in miniature, cups stamped floridly with the arms of the city of Bristol, hair-pin boxes crusted with shamrock, antelopes' heads in coloured plaster, together with a multitude of tiny photographs, representing downright workmen in their Sunday best, and women holding white babies.
The counter had a great variety of images and figures, birds that would peep, and dogs that would bark, and drummers that would drum all by just turning a little handle. Then the shelves and the window were filled with all sorts of boxes, and whips, and puzzles, and tea-sets, and dolls, dressed and not dressed.
In due time the dinner- and tea-sets were carefully bestowed in the "Davis," together with sundry jars of sweetmeats that I had prepared in Detroit; the iron and tin utensils were placed in a neat cupboard in the kitchen, of which my piano-box supplied the frame; the barrel of eggs and tubs of butter, brought all the way from Ohio, were ranged in the store-room; a suitable quantity of salt pork and flour was purchased from the commissary; and, there being no lack of game of every description, the offering of our red children, we were ready to commence housekeeping.
But, bless you, toys of this kind are endless here! Teetotums made of old cotton reels, tea-sets of acorn cups, dinner-sets of old shells, monkeys made of bits of sponge, all sorts of things made of breastbones and merrythoughts, old packs of cards that are always building themselves into houses and getting knocked down when the band begins to play, feathers, rabbits' tails "'Ah!
The counter had a great variety of images and figures, birds that would peep, and dogs that would bark, and drummers that would drum all by just turning a little handle. Then the shelves and the window were filled with all sorts of boxes, and whips, and puzzles, and tea-sets, and dolls, dressed and not dressed.
Not a few quartette rooms possessed tea-sets, they being the joint possession of the occupants of that particular study. At retiring bell on this eventful night all things were ready, including a spirit lamp on which to make chocolate, hidden away in Helen Cameron's shirt-waist box.
The one thing above all others in that room that recalled Sidonie was an 'etagere' covered with childish toys, petty, trivial knickknacks, microscopic fans, dolls' tea-sets, gilded shoes, little shepherds and shepherdesses facing one another, exchanging cold, gleaming, porcelain glances.
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