XIX 
  
THE POOR MAN’S TOY 
  
  
I SHOULD like to tell you of an innocent 
amusement. There are so few amusements 
that are not guilty ones! 
When you go out in the morning with the 
intention of lounging in the streets, fill your 
pockets with halfpenny toys, such as the flat 
Punch, moved by a single thread; blacksmiths 
beating the anvil; the horseman and his steed 
whose tail is a whistle. And, as you walk by the 
inns below the trees, make presents of them to 
poor stranger children that you may meet. You 
will see their eyes grow great out of all knowl-
edge. At first they will not dare to accept; it 
will seem too good to be true; then their hands 
will fasten lively on the present, and they will 
dash off as cats do, who go far away to eat the 
morsel you have given them, having learned to 
distrust man. 
On a road, behind the pale of a large gar-
den, at the end of which shone the whiteness 
of a pretty house bathing in the sun, was a