But not so the frog
which jumps with a spring, the wooden hammers which fall alternately
on their wooden anvil by the simplest of contrivances, and the
horseman without legs, whose horse has a whistle instead of a tail.
How any one of these articles could be sold for a sou passed my
comprehension until I learned details so surprising as to throw this
one quite into the shade.
There are blousards whose whole lives are passed in carving these toys
from the wood of the linden tree, and daubing them with the most
flaming reds, the most glittering yellows, the most dazzling blues,
that ever colorist beheld. The toy whips with handles decorated with
gilt paper wrapped about them spirally are said to be exclusively made
by Israelites, but the ingenuity of the human mind has not devised an
explanation of this curious fact. The papier-mache sheep is one of
the most elaborately fashioned toys sold for a sou, and the mode of
making it is this: The workman takes old scraps of paper and mashes
them in water to a pulp: this he sticks around the inside of a rude
mould, which is in two parts, one for each side of the sheep. When the
two sides are moulded, he sticks them together and dips the whole in a
pot of white mucilaginous paint. When this coating is dry, he tattoos
the sheep according to his fancy, covers its back with a bit of
sheepskin, and ties a red string around its neck.
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