Paper doll

“ Corks, clay pipes, bone buttons, raffia, yarn, may be used for doll heads with these bodies.
Vegetable dolls. Carrots, potatoes, cucumbers, squashes may be used, and the features marked with ink or knife.
The temporary possibility of vegetable, nut, and other “stunt” dolls does not add to their popularity. They are of interest chiefly after nine years, when the doll interest is waning.
Paper dolls. Bodies made of stiff paper or pasteboard, with clothes that can be taken off and put on. Faces can be drawn with ink or water colors, or heads from pictures may be pasted on. ”

“ I’m busy all the day. Paper Doll:
I’m only made of paper
And cheap as cheap can be.
I don’t belong in this parade,
But still, you might like me.
My dresses, colored paper,
You’d find it fun to make.
In fact, unless you take me home
You’ll make a sad mistake. Baby Doll:
Cunning baby doll am I
Pinch me and I cry
Loudly for my parents,
Don’t you want to try? [Shop Woman pinches her and she cries.] ”

“ Paper dolls are not as good to play with as proper dolls. One can do much less with them because they cannot be washed, have no hair to be brushed, and should not sit down. But they can be exceedingly pretty, and the keeping of their wardrobes in touch with the fashion is an absorbing occupation. Paper dolls are more interesting to those who like painting than to others. The pleasure of coloring them and their dresses is to many of us quite as interesting as cutting out and sewing the clothes of ordinary dolls. ”

“ Passing girl after girl, we find them all surrounded by the brightest of colours in gelatine and paper. One is making paper dresses for a doll, a neat little white tissue frock trimmed with red braid. This formed part of rather a novel box of crackers. A good-looking doll is placed in the box, and each cracker has some article of attire inside, so that when every one was "pulled" the doll could be provided with a complete outfit. ”

“ Paper Dolls THE paper dolls were more like real people than any of the others. They were made by cutting heads from colored picture cards or from magazines and pasting them on cardboard bodies. Then double dress patterns were folded and cut to slip over the heads of the dolls, and on these patterns were pasted gowns of tissue paper in all colors and styles. ”

“ No use packing them away in messy boxes, with books and pillows and pictures. By next fall the doll fever will be over.
“There can be doll dances in costume, and a doll play, if Madeline isn’t too famous to write one. The May-pole dancers can be dressed like dolls too.”
Fluffy sighed and interrupted: “Shan’t you mind at all parting with Wooden?”
“Not a bit,” returned Georgia, the matter-of-fact. “Let’s get a paper ready for the girls to sign, with the number of dolls they can furnish opposite their names.” ”

“ For the bodices always cut a paper pattern on the doll and make the same seams and all just as if making a body for a grown person. Another thing make every article of underclothing for the doll. Many ladies when buying will take into consideration the fact that they are getting good value for their money in a well dressed doll. A packet of needles, reel of cotton, thimble and bodkin, so that when they have done with the needles and thread the doll will come in for one of the children. ”

“ But I'm sure you will pardon my untidy room, for this is my workshop."
"Do you make all the paper dolls?" inquired Dorothy.
"Yes; I cut them out with my scissors, and paint the faces and some of the costumes. It is very pleasant work, and I am happy making my paper village grow."
"But how do the paper dolls happen to be alive?" asked Aunt Em.
"The first dolls I made were not alive," said Miss Cuttenclip. "I used to live near the castle of a great Sorceress [109] named Glinda the Good, and she saw my dolls and said they were very pretty. ”

“ A slit was made in one side, and each child put in his hand and drew out some article wrapped in tissue paper. These proved to be dolls, balls, and toys of all sorts. Some drew out tiny boxes inside of which were slips of paper with directions like these: "Look under the divan and you will find a steam-engine," "Look beside the radiator and you will find a doll's kitchen," etc.
In the dressing-room they were softly pelted with a mysterious shower of snowballs, which they endeavored to catch. The balls were packages of marshmallows wound loosely with white crepe paper. ”

“ During all this time he never once recollected that he had got on the brown paper cocked hat.
‘Now,’ said the master, taking me out of the boy’s hand, and holding me at arm’s length, ‘you must give me the cake and two shillings besides for this doll. This is a young lady of a very superior make, is this doll. Made by one of the first makers. The celebrated Sprat, the only maker, I may say, of this kind of jointed dolls. See! all the joints move—all work in the proper way; up and down, backwards and forwards, any way you please. See what lovely blue eyes; what rosy cheeks and lips ”

“ To any one sending us $6 in new subscriptions to the Witness publications we will send one of the above described platform scales.
FOR THE LITTLE GIRLS ONLY.
Every little girl has an intense longing for a beautiful doll. Those little girls who desire a large and handsome wax doll to act as head of their doll family can easily earn one for themselves by canvassing for subscribers to our paper among their friends and relations. ”

“ How many dolls did you buy, and what else did you get? Sister and I have thought of several nice things to do for the bazar, and ever so many of the young people are going to help. Rudolph is going to donate some photographs and will take orders for others; then some of the boys are going into the woods for tiny little cedar and pine trees which we are going to plant in pots. Mrs. Morrison's sister has promised to make some paper dolls—I remember the beautiful one she made for Louis to send to you last year, Edna,—and, oh my, we are going to have a big time. ”

“ For we really enjoy making the things, as well as thinking of the pleasure they will give the children later. We have made cambric scrap-leaves, paper dolls with dresses of tissue-paper, a menagerie and circus of paper animals, and over sixty colored paper dolls—the sort which have dresses to come off. ”

“ It is so arranged that the arms and legs are fastened on movable discs, and Miss Dolly, instead of being the flat, uninteresting thing that most paper dolls are, can move her arms and legs, and attend tea parties, and take refreshments, just as any well brought-up stuffed dolly can. ”

“ On the stall are baby dolls with bodies made of grey cardboard, smiling after the manner of idols, monstrous and serene as they. Little six-penny dolls, dressed like servant girls, stretch out their arms, little stumpy arms so flimsy that the least breath of air sets them a-tremble. But the little maid whose hair is made of liquid light, has no eyes for these dolls and puppets. Her whole soul hangs upon the lips of a beautiful baby doll that seems to be calling her his mummy. He is hitched on to one of the poles of the booth all by himself. He dominates, he effaces everything else. ”

“ This breathing of life into playthings is seen in all its magic force in play with dolls. A doll, broadly conceived, is anything which a child carries about and makes a pet of. The toy horse, dog or what not that a little boy nurses, feeds and takes to bed with him has much of the dignity of a true doll. But adopting conventional distinctions we shall confine the word to those things which are more or less endowed by childish fancy with human form and character. ”

“ Such dolls are well dressed, and look so life-like,—little slanting eyes, shaven pates, smiles, and all!—that as seen from a short distance the best eyes might be deceived by them. Therefore, in those stock photographs of Japanese life, of which so many thousands are sold in the open ports, the conventional baby on the mother's back is most successfully represented by a doll. Even the camera does not betray the substitution. ”

“ The eldest boy painted hair, or fitted and glued hair on to the heads of the best dolls. The second boy fitted half legs and arms together, by pegs at the joints. The little girl did nothing but paint rosy cheeks and lips, which she always did very nicely, though sometimes she made them rather too red, and looking as if very hot, or blushing extremely.
[5] Now Mr. Sprat was very ingenious and clever in his business as a doll-maker. He was able to make dolls of various kinds, even of wax, or of a sort of composition ”

“ Of the ready-made toys, toy furniture for the house, the sand pile for outdoors and the doll for both are most useful. “The doll,” as Sully tells us, “takes a supreme place in this fancy realm of play. The doll is an all-important comrade in that solitude à deux, of which the child, like the adult, is so fond.” The complete adaptability of the doll makes it an ideal means for the puppet play of idealism. “A good, efficient, able-bodied doll, like the American girl’s,” says Joseph Lee, “is at home in any situation in life, from princess to kitchen maid, to which she may be called. ”

“ It was a rudimentary attempt at a rag doll; so rudimentary indeed that as the passing flash of the lamps disclosed its proportions, or rather the lack of them, a titter rose from the darkness behind, where some older folk were lounging.
The old doll-maker, who was attempting to thread a big packing-needle by the faint flicker, turned towards the sound in mild reproof: "Lo! brothers and sisters," he said, "have patience awhile. Even the Creator takes time to make His puppets, and this of mine will be as dolls are always when it is done. And a doll is a doll ever, nothing more, nothing less." ”

“ But the child has had its hour of play and make-believe sentiment of companionship and authority; and so, if the doll can do no good of itself, it can at least be the occasion of pleasantness to others.
Now there are women who are dolls in all but the mere accident of material. The doll proper is a simple structure of wax or wood, 'its knees and elbows glued together;' and the human doll is a complex machine of flesh and blood. ”

“ Both varieties of dolls are attired in the costume of the people; but the négresse is usually dressed the more simply. Each doll has a broidered chemise, a tastefully arranged jupe of bright hues; a silk foulard, a collier-choux, ear-rings of five cylinders (zanneaux-à-clous) , and a charming little yellow-banded Madras turban. Such a doll is a perfect costume-model,—a perfect miniature of Martinique fashions, to the smallest details of material and color: it is almost too artistic for a toy. ”

“ Since I visited you half the things I see turn into dolls as I look at them, and I immediately begin to make songs or jingles about them just as you do. As I sit at the table the dishes even, take doll form in my mind. The plates seem to have great moon faces, while the sugar bowl seems to stand with shoulders thrown up and arms akimbo like an awkward china washerwoman. The knives, forks and spoons are almost human with their shining faces. ”

“ Showy toys, that are merely to look at, and from which they can derive no enjoyment but in breaking them to pieces, are not worth buying. Little girls delight in little tea-sets, and dinner-sets, in which they can “make feasts,” miniature kitchen-utensils, to play at cooking, washing, &c.; and dolls so dressed that all the clothes can be taken off and put on at pleasure. They soon grow tired of a doll whose glittering habiliments are sewed fast upon her. A wax doll in elegant attire is too precarious and expensive a plaything to make them happy; as they are always afraid of injuring her. ”

“ Quickly in the rear of the white horses and the spirits, who all wore little round caps with tassels at the top, came a procession of dolls—wax dolls, wooden dolls, and saw-dust dolls, very finely dressed, with here and there a doll who had lost a leg, or an arm, or a head, while some were quite cripples, and had to be carried by a train of tiny girls in very short frocks and very long sashes. ”

“ The solemnity left one chubby brown face, and one pair of chubby brown hands closed in glad possession round the despised rag doll. Old Premoo heaved a sigh of relief.
"Said I not so, brothers and sisters?" he cried exultingly. "My hand has not lost its art with the years. A doll is a doll ever to a child, as a child is a child ever to the man and the woman. As for glass eyes, they are illusion--they perish!" ”

“ The doll is a thing august. Wherefore cannot one of our great sculptors be so very kind as to take the trouble to model dolls whose lineaments, coming to life beneath his fingers, would tell of wisdom and of beauty?
At last the little girl awakens from her silent day-dream. She turns round and shows her violet eyes made bigger still with wonder, her nose which makes you smile to look at it, her tiny nose, quite white, that reminds you of a little pug dog’s black one, her solemn mouth, her shapely but too delicate chin, her cheeks a shade too pale. ”

“ It was just about this time that Mademoiselle Cerise was bought by a lady as a present for her little god-daughter.
“But the color of the doll’s dress has become faded,” said the lady. “She must have a new one before I take her.”
“That can easily be arranged in a day,” said the owner of the shop.
“Very well,” answered the lady, “then I will buy her. You need not send her. I will bring my little friend with me to-morrow afternoon when we shall be passing your shop. She will like to carry her new doll through the streets.” ”