Is Annie a literary lady ? Yes ; she is deeply read in Peter Parley 's tomes and has an increasing love for fairy-tales , though seldom met with nowadays , and she will subscribe next year to the Juvenile Miscellany . But , truth to tell , she is apt to turn away from the printed page and keep gazing at the pretty pictures , such as the gay-colored ones which make this shop-window the continual loitering-place of children . What would Annie think if , in the book which I mean to send her on New Year 's day , she should find her sweet little self bound up in silk or morocco with gilt edges , there to remain till she become a woman grown with children of her own to read about their mother 's childhood ? That would be very queer . Little Annie is weary of pictures and pulls me onward by the hand , till suddenly we pause at the most wondrous shop in all the town . Oh , my stars ! Is this a toyshop , or is it fairy-land ? For here are gilded chariots in which the king and queen of the fairies might ride side by side , while their courtiers on these small horses should gallop in triumphal procession before and behind the royal pair . Here , too , are dishes of chinaware fit to be the dining-set of those same princely personages when they make a regal banquet in the stateliest hall of their palace -- full five feet high -- and behold their nobles feasting adown the long perspective of the table . Betwixt the king and queen should sit my little Annie , the prettiest fairy of them all . Here stands a turbaned Turk threatening us with his sabre , like an ugly heathen as he is , and next a Chinese mandarin who nods his head at Annie and myself . Here we may review a whole army of horse and foot in red-and-blue uniforms , with drums , fifes , trumpets , and all kinds of noiseless music ; they have halted on the shelf of this window after their weary march from Liliput . But what cares Annie for soldiers ? No conquering queen is she -- neither a Semiramis nor a Catharine ; her whole heart is set upon that doll who gazes at us with such a fashionable stare . This is the little girl 's true plaything . Though made of wood , a doll is a visionary and ethereal personage endowed by childish fancy with a peculiar life ; the mimic lady is a heroine of romance , an actor and a sufferer in a thousand shadowy scenes , the chief inhabitant of that wild world with which children ape the real one . Little Annie does not understand what I am saying , but looks wishfully at the proud lady in the window . We will invite her home with us as we return . -- Meantime , good-bye , Dame Doll !
A toy yourself , you look forth from your window upon many ladies that are also toys , XXXXX they walk and speak , and upon a crowd in pursuit of toys , though they wear grave visages .
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