If "every dog has his day" it is equally true that every doll has her day. But what is more to our point is that every day has its doll. No possible limits can be set to this familiar, commonplace plaything of the child. As far as we know there have always been dolls—for there have always been chil dren—and human kind, in youth or age, has never tired playing at the game of reality. For in the last analysis the doll is but the child's imitation of a real, flesh-and-blood baby, evidencing the first unconscious fruits of the maternal instinct. As the child resembles the mother, so the doll mirrors—even if at times grotesquely—the ideas of its maker. The history of dolldom is thus an epitome of civilization.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.