Some of you ... may have decided that, this year, you're going to celebrate it the old-fashioned way, with your family sitting around stringing cranberries and exchanging humble, handmade gifts, like on "The Waltons". Well, you can forget it. If everybody pulled that kind of subversive stunt, the economy would collapse overnight. The government would have to intervene: it would form a cabinet-level Department of Holiday Gift-Giving, which would spend billions and billions of tax dollars to buy Barbie dolls</p> and electronic games, which it would drop on the populace from Air Force jets, killing and maiming thousands. So, for the good of the nation, you should go along with the Holiday Program. This means you should get a large sum of money and go to a mall. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
The man had placed his elbows on the table, and resumed his thoughtful attitude. All the other travellers, both pedlers and carters, had withdrawn a little, and had ceased singing. They were staring at him from a distance, with a sort of respectful awe. This poorly dressed man, who drew "hind-wheels" from his pocket with so much ease, and who lavished gigantic dolls on dirty little brats in wooden shoes, was certainly a magnificent fellow, and one to be feared.
"Old beast! What has he got in his belly, to come and upset us in this manner! To want that little monster to play! to give away forty-franc dolls to a jade that I would sell for forty sous, so I would! A little more and he will be saying Your Majesty to her, as though to the Duchess de Berry! Is there any sense in it? Is he mad, then, that mysterious old fellow?"
"Ah!" he cried, "so I've found you again at last, Mister philanthropist! Mister threadbare millionnaire! Mister giver of dolls! you old ninny! Ah! so you don't recognize me! No, it wasn't you who came to Montfermeil, to my inn, eight years ago, on Christmas eve, 1823! It wasn't you who carried off that Fantine's child from me! The Lark! It wasn't you who had a yellow great-coat! No! Nor a package of duds in your hand, as you had this morning here! Say, wife, it seems to be his mania to carry packets of woollen stockings into houses! Old charity monger, get out with you! Are you a hosier, Mister millionnaire? You give away your stock in trade to the poor, holy man! What bosh! merry Andrew! Ah! and you don't recognize me? Well, I recognize you, that I do! I recognized you the very moment you poked your snout in here. Ah! you'll find out presently, that it isn't all roses to thrust yourself in that fashion into people's houses, under the pretext that they are taverns, in wretched clothes, with the air of a poor man, to whom one would give a sou, to deceive persons, to play the generous, to take away their means of livelihood, and to make threats in the woods, and you can't call things quits because afterwards, when people are ruined, you bring a coat that is too large, and two miserable hospital blankets, you old blackguard, you child-stealer!"
"You have seen both dolls and birds to-day," said Madame Defarge, with a wave of her hand towards the place where they had last been apparent; "now, go home!"
"If you were shown a great heap of dolls, and were set upon them to pluck them to pieces and despoil them for your own advantage, you would pick out the richest and gayest. Say! Would you not?"
At the moment when Cosette emerged, bucket in hand, melancholy and overcome as she was, she could not refrain from lifting her eyes to that wonderful doll, towards the lady, as she called it. The poor child paused in amazement. She had not yet beheld that doll close to. The whole shop seemed a palace to her: the doll was not a doll; it was a vision. It was joy, splendor, riches, happiness, which appeared in a sort of chimerical halo to that unhappy little being so profoundly engulfed in gloomy and chilly misery. With the sad and innocent sagacity of childhood, Cosette measured the abyss which separated her from that doll. She said to herself that one must be a queen, or at least a princess, to have a "thing" like that. She gazed at that beautiful pink dress, that beautiful smooth hair, and she thought, "How happy that doll must be!" She could not take her eyes from that fantastic stall. The more she looked, the more dazzled she grew. She thought she was gazing at paradise. There were other dolls behind the large one, which seemed to her to be fairies and genii. The merchant, who was pacing back and forth in front of his shop, produced on her somewhat the effect of being the Eternal Father.
"In the best way I can. They let me alone; but I have not many playthings. Ponine and Zelma will not let me play with their dolls. I have only a little lead sword, no longer than that."
The countess did not believe her ears. Denisov had proposed. To whom? To this chit of a girl, Natasha, who not so long ago was playing with dolls and who was still having lessons.
2. _Private Games._--These may be classified as outdoor and indoor games. There is naturally all the world over a much closer resemblance between the pursuits and amusements of children than of adults. Homer's children built castles in the sand, and Greek and Roman children alike had their dolls, their hoops, their skipping-ropes, their hobby-horses, their kites, their knuckle-bones and played at hopscotch, the tug-of-war, pitch and toss, blind-man's buff, hide and seek, and kiss in the ring or at closely analogous games. Games of ball were popular in Greece from the days of Nausicaa, and at Rome there were five distinct kinds of ball and more ways of playing with them. For particulars the dictionary of antiquities must be consulted. It is strange that we can find in classical literature no analogy to cricket, tennis, golf or polo, and though the _follis_ resembled our football, it was played with the hand and arm, not with the leg. Cock-fighting was popular both at Athens and Rome, and quails were kept and put to various tests to prove their pluck. Entry: 2
APRIL, the second month of the ancient Roman, and the fourth of the modern calendar, containing thirty days. The derivation of the name is uncertain. The traditional etymology from Lat. _aperire_, "to open," in allusion to its being the season when trees and flowers begin to "open," is supported by comparison with the modern Greek use of [Greek: anoixis] (opening) for spring. This seems very possible, though, as all the Roman months were named in honour of divinities, and as April was sacred to Venus, the _Festum Veneris et Fortunae Virilis_ being held on the first day, it has been suggested that Aprilis was originally her month Aphrilis, from her Greek name Aphrodite. Jacob Grimm suggests the name of a hypothetical god or hero, _Aper_ or _Aprus_. On the fourth and the five following days, games (_Ludi Megalenses_) were celebrated in honour of Cybele; on the fifth there was the _Festum Fortunae Publicae_; on the tenth (?) games in the circus, and on the nineteenth equestrian combats, in honour of Ceres; on the twenty-first--which was regarded as the birthday of Rome--the _Vinalia urbana_, when the wine of the previous autumn was first tasted; on the twenty-fifth, the _Robigalia_, for the averting of mildew; and on the twenty-eighth and four following days, the riotous _Floralia_. The Anglo-Saxons called April _Oster-monath_ or _Eostur-monath_, the period sacred to _Eostre_ or _Ostara_, the pagan Saxon goddess of spring, from whose name is derived the modern Easter. St George's day is the twenty-third of the month; and St Mark's Eve, with its superstition that the ghosts of those who are doomed to die within the year will be seen to pass into the church, falls on the twenty-fourth. In China the symbolical ploughing of the earth by the emperor and princes of the blood takes place in their third month, which frequently corresponds to our April; and in Japan the feast of Dolls is celebrated in the same month. The "days of April" (_journées d'avril_) is a name appropriated in French history to a series of insurrections at Lyons, Paris and elsewhere, against the government of Louis Philippe in 1834, which led to violent repressive measures, and to a famous trial known as the _procès d'avril_. Entry: APRIL
DOLL, a child's plaything in the shape of a human figure or taken as representing one. The word "doll" was not in common use in the middle ages, "children's babies" and other terms being substituted for it; the commonly accepted view is that it is abbreviated from the name Dorothy (cf. Scottish "Doroty"). "Idol" has also been connected with it; but the accent is held to tell against this. Another derivation is from Norse _daul_ (woman), with which may be compared O.H.G. _toccha_, M.H.G. _docke_, a girl, doll, used also in the sense of butterfly, nightmare, &c., thus connecting the doll with magic and superstition. The same connexion is found in Asia Minor, South India, among the Pueblo peoples and in South Africa; philology apart, therefore, the derivation from "idol" has much to recommend it, and some side influence from this word may well have caused the selection of the form "doll." Dolls proper should be distinguished from (a) idols, (b) magical figurines, (c) votive offerings, (d) costume figures. The festival figures of Japan, like the bambino of Italy, given to the child only on certain saints' days, hardly come within the category of dolls. Entry: DOLL
BHAU DAJI (RAMKRISHNA VITHAL) (1822-1874), Hindu physician of Bombay, Sanskrit scholar and antiquary, was born in 1822 at the village of Manjare, in the native state of Sawantwari, of humble parents dealing in clay dolls. Dr Bhau's career is a striking instance of great results arising from small accidents. An Englishman noticing his cleverness at chess induced his father to give the boy an English education. Accordingly Bhau was brought to Bombay and was educated at the Elphinstone Institution. He relieved his father of the cost of his education by winning many prizes and scholarships, and on his father's death two years later he cheerfully undertook the burden of supporting his mother and a brother (Narayen), who also in after-life became a distinguished physician and surgeon. About this time he gained a prize for an essay on infanticide, and was appointed a teacher in the Elphinstone Institution. He began to devote his time to the study of Indian antiquities, deciphering inscriptions and ascertaining the dates and history of ancient Sanskrit authors. He then studied at the Grant Medical College, and was one of the first batch who graduated there in 1850. In 1851 he set up as a medical practitioner in Bombay, where his success was so great that he soon made a fortune. He studied the Sanskrit literature of medicine, and also tested the value of drugs to which the ancient Hindus ascribed marvellous powers, among other pathological subjects of historical interest investigating that of leprosy. Being an ardent promoter of education, he was appointed a member of the board of education, and was one of the original fellows of the university of Bombay. As the first native president of the students' literary and scientific society, and the champion of the cause of female education, a girls' school was founded in his name, for which an endowment was provided by his friends and admirers. In the political progress of India he took a great and active interest, and the Bombay Association and the Bombay branch of the East Indian Association owe their existence to his ability and exertions. He was twice chosen sheriff of Bombay, in 1869 and 1871. Various scientific societies in England, France, Germany and America conferred on him their membership. He contributed numerous papers to the journal of the Bombay branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. He found time to make a large collection of rare ancient Sanskrit manuscripts at great cost and trouble. He died in May 1874. His brother, Dr Narayen Daji (who helped him to set up the charitable dispensary in Bombay), did not long survive him. Dr Bhau was a man of the most simple and amiable character and manners; his kindness and sympathy towards the poor and distressed were unbounded, and endeared his memory among the Hindus of Bombay. (N. B. W.) Entry: BHAU
Whence this seeming blight and decay of art? Salomon Reinach, guided by the analogy of similar practices among the aborigines of Australia, and noticing that these primitive pictures represent none but animals that formed the staple food of the age and place, and that they are usually found in the deepest and darkest recesses of the caves where they could only be drawn and seen by torchlight, has argued that they were not intended for artistic gratification (a late motive in human art), but were magical representations destined to influence and perhaps attract the hunter's quarry. In a word this earliest art was ancillary to the chase. It is a common practice in the magic of all ages and countries to acquire control and influence over men and animals by making images of them. The prototype is believed to suffer whatever is done to the image. Reinach, therefore, supposes that in the Stone age which succeeded, pictorial art was banned because it had got into the hands of magicians and had come to be regarded as inevitably uncanny and malefic. This is certainly the secret of the ordinary Mahommedan prohibition of pictures and statues, which goes even to the length of denying to poor little Arab girls the enjoyment of having dolls. It is felt that if you have got a picture of any one, you have some power of harming him through it; you can bind or loose him, just as you can a Djinn whose name you have somehow learned. It is as dangerous for your enemy to have a picture of you as for him to know your name. The old Hebrew prohibition of graven images was surely based on a like superstition, so far as it was not merely due to the physical impossibility for nomads of heavy statues that do not admit of being carried from camp to camp and from pasture to pasture. Possessing no images of Yahweh the Jews were also not exposed to the same risk as were idolaters of having their gods stolen by their foes and used against them. Lastly, the restriction to aniconic worship saved them from much superstition, for there is nothing which so much stimulates the growth of a mythology as the manufacture of idols. The artist must indeed start with imaginative types, revealed to him in visions or borrowed from current myths. But the tendency of his art is to give rise to new tales of the gods. There is perpetual action and reaction between picture and myth; and a legislator desiring to purify and raise his countrymen's religion must devote no less attention to their plastic art than to their hymnology. Entry: IMAGE
Image worship then is a sort of animism. It is a continuance by adults of their childish games with dolls. In the Roman religion, on a feast of thanksgiving for a great victory, couches were spread in the temples for the gods, whose images were taken down from their pedestals and laid on the couches, and tables set before them loaded with delicate viands. This was called a _Lectisternium_. So Marco Polo (i. chap. 53) relates how the Tatars had each a figure of Natigay, the god of the earth, who watched over their children, cattle and crops. The image was made of felt and cloth, and similar images of his wife and children were set on his left hand and in front of him. "And when they eat, they take the fat of the meat and grease the god's mouth withal, as well as the mouths of his wife and children." The old Greek statues moved of themselves, shook their spears, kneeled down, spoke, walked, wept, laughed, winked, and even bled and sweated,--a mighty portent. Images of Christ, of the Virgin and saints have achieved many a similar miraculous portent. A figure of Christ has been known even to give its shoes to a poor man, and a Virgin to drop a ring off her finger to a suppliant. In Umbrian villages on Easter Sunday the images of Jesus and His Mother are carried in rival processions from their respective chapels, and are made to bow when they meet face to face. The spectators applaud or hiss according as they make their bow well or ill. In antiquity it was a common ceremony to arrange a holy marriage between male and female images, and such unions acted on the earth as a fertility charm. Much of a priest's time was given up to the toilet of the god or goddess. Thus Isis was dressed and coiffed every day by her special attendants according to Apuleius (_Met._ xi. 9). Like the statue of St Agatha of Catania to-day, her image was loaded with jewels, and an inscription of Cadiz (_C.I.L._ ii. 3386) contains an inventory of the jewels with which Isis had been endowed by Spanish devotees. Entry: IMAGE
FRANKENTHAL, a town of Germany, in the Bavarian Palatinate, on the Isenach, connected with the Rhine by a canal 3 m. in length, 6 m. N.W. from Mannheim, and on the railways Neunkirchen-Worms and Frankenthal-Grosskarlbach. Pop. (1905) 18,191. It has two Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church, a fine medieval town-hall, two interesting old gates, remains of its former environing walls, several public monuments, including one to the veterans of the Napoleonic wars, and a museum. Its industries include the manufacture of machinery, casks, corks, soap, dolls and furniture, iron-founding and bell-founding--the famous "Kaiserglocke" of the Cologne cathedral was cast here. Frankenthal was formerly famous for its porcelain factory, established here in 1755 by Paul Anton Hannong of Strassburg, who sold it in 1762 to the elector palatine Charles Theodore. Its fame is mainly due to the modellers Konrad Link (1732-1802) and Johann Peter Melchior (d. 1796) (who worked at Frankenthal between 1779 and 1793). The best products of this factory are figures and groups representing contemporary life, or allegorical subjects in the rococo taste of the period, and they are surpassed only by those of the more famous factory at Meissen. In 1795 the factory was sold to Peter von Reccum, who removed it to Grünstadt. Entry: FRANKENTHAL
But little attention has been paid to the psychological side of dolls. Though many boys play with them, dolls are mainly confined to girls; and female dolls predominate in the proportion of twelve to one. The culmination of the doll instinct is between the age of eight and nine; but they are not entirely dropped till much later; in fact unmarried and childless women sometimes keep it up for years. In children it is said by Hall to be by no means always a manifestation of the maternal instinct; for dolls are not always regarded as children, and the proportion of adults increases with the age of the children. But the important point is whether the child regarded itself as older or younger than the doll. There is, on the other hand, a tendency to neglect dolls for babies and a reverse current of love of dolls which arises out of love of babies. Entry: DOLL
Marionettes proper, and the dolls exhibited in puppet shows (not including Punch and his companion actors), are constructed of wood or of pasteboard, with faces of composition, sometimes of wax; and each figure is suspended by a number of threads to a short bar of wood which is commonly held in one hand of the hidden performer while the finger of his other hand poses the figure or gives action to it by means of the threads. In the mode of constructing the joints, and the greater elaboration with which the several parts of the limbs are supported and moved, and especially in the fine degrees of movement given to the heads, marionettes have been so improved as to present very exact imitations of the gestures of actors and actresses, and the postures and evolutions of acrobats; and, in addition, ingenious exhibitors such as Theodon, who introduced many novelties in the 'sixties of the 19th century, have employed mechanical arrangements for accomplishing the tricks of pantomime harlequinade. Among the puppet personages presented in the small street shows are generally included a sailor who dances a hornpipe, a hoop-dancer, a dancer of the Highland fling, a wooden-legged pensioner, a vaulter on a pole also balancing two chairs, a clown playing with a butterfly, a dancing figure without head until the head rises out of the body, gradually displaying an enormously long neck, and a skeleton, seen at first in scattered parts lying about the stage, but piece successively flying to piece, the body first sitting up, then standing, and finally capped by the skull, when the completed figure begins to dance. Entry: MARIONETTES
LOESS (Ger. _Löss_), in geology, a variety of loam. Typical loess is a soft, porous rock, pale yellowish or buff in colour; one characteristic property is its capacity to retain vertical, or even over-hanging, walls in the banks of streams. These vertical walls have been well described by von Richthofen (_Führer für Forschungsreisende_, Berlin, 1886) in China, where they stand in some places 500 ft. high and contain innumerable cave dwellings; ancient roads too have worn their way vertically downwards deep into the deposit, forming trench-like ways. This character in the loess of the Mississippi region gave rise to the name "Bluff formation." A coarse columnar structure is often exhibited on the vertical weathered faces of the rock. Another characteristic is the presence throughout the rock of small capillary tubules, which appear to have been occupied by rootlets; these are often lined with calcite. Typical loess is usually calcareous; some geologists regard this as an essential property, and when the rock has become decalcified, as it frequently is on the surface by weathering, they call it "loess-loam" (_lösslehm_). In the lower portions of a loess deposit the calcium carbonate tends to form concretions, which on account of their mimetic forms have received such names as _lösskindchen_, _lösspuppen_, _poupées du loess_, "loess dolls." In deposits of this nature in South America these concretionary masses form distinct beds. Bedding is absent from typical loess. The mineral composition of loess varies somewhat in different regions, but the particles are always small; they consist of angular grains of quartz, fine particles of hydrated silicates of alumina, mica scales and undecomposed fragments of felspar, hornblende and other rock-forming silicates. Entry: LOESS