Show FAMOUS DOLL MOTHERS I The Wooden Hag Wax and China Babies That They Loved and Mourned I will probably interest a great many little girls who love large and flourishIng flourish-Ing doll families to know that in their childhood nearly all the most gifted and famous women were the devoted mothers moth-ers of very tenderly cherished wax kid or rag babies I When Charlotte and Emily Bronte I two of the most famous English novelists novel-ists were little women they lived a j j hard desolate life on the bleak Yorkshire o York-shire moors and found the chief pleasure pleas-ure of their rather sad young lives In playing with a set of very ugly wooden dells They thought rather slightingly I of doll babies dressed the wooden figures ures in coats and trousers and gave thtni most heroic names Charlotte thn I Brontes favorite playfellow was called the Duke of Wellington and the gallant dulte had armies of tin soldiers against Emilys Napoleon or stood up to listen I while Charlotte read to him long poems she had composed In his honor Beside the battles these lovely chil circa built a tiny stage in their nursery I and wrote little plays for the dolls to I act and composed thrilling romances in which one doll rescued another from the pirates or Turks or went tiger shooting in a jungle of shawls in one end of the play room The Bronte dolls had l very exciting lives indeed but their end was not so sad a that of Jane Welsh Carlyles doll This clever lady was wonderfully precocious pre-cocious asa child and she never loved I but one doll Vhen at last in her studI Is the remarkable little girl began to I translate the first book of Virgil she I decided it was time to give up doll O > I games Accordingly she piled on its bed all the dolls clothes added several lead pencils a few sticks of cinnamon grated over this some nutmeg and emptied over the funeral pyre a vial of perfume Finally with many tears she pretended that poor dolly had stabbed herself and laying the unhappy un-happy sawdust corpse on the bed set fire to it At first the fire raged merrily mer-rily but when it began to burn the doll poor little Jane Welshs feelings gave way She snatched her darling from the flames but all too late and the much loved toy was soon reduced to ashes George Eliot possessed several dolls In her childhood but gave them her attention at-tention or affection only by fits and starts In her novel called The Mill on the Floss she writes of a little I girl Maggie Tulllver who kept in the garret a hideous wooden doll lacking ahead a-head one arm and a leg When poor Maggie was in trouble she went to the I garret to weep and drive nails into the forlorn body of this wretched plaything called Fetish Bvery nail in Fetishs body represented the fault for which Maggie mourned or suffered punishment punish-ment When grown to be a famous woman George Eliot confessed that In her youthful days she had owned and maltreated a doll called Fetish and Maggies behavior was the true story of her own childish life The very tenderest doll mamas were Miss Jean Ingelow and Mrs Ritchie William M Thackerays daughter Miss Ingelow possessed a special waxen favorite fav-orite that shenamed Amelia A charming charm-ing time did Amelia have with the loving lov-ing little Jean Amelia went everywhere her mother did she was introduced to all the agreeable people who came to the Ingelow house her dresses were always made from a piece of whatever cloth her mother wore and when games or merry times were enjoyed in the nursery Amelia was thoughtfully I nurser Amela thoushtfulj placed wherever she could take in the I fun with the rest of the young folks I An illadvised bath on a hot day was so hopelessly destructive to Amelias painted beauty and sawdust constitution constitu-tion that the Ingelow family pronounced pronounc-ed her quite dead Her funeral was well attended and for many months Jean sorrowed for Amelia and refused ever to take another doll to her heart Not only her own big doll family but all dolls fine or shabby large or small black or white who came little Annie Thackerays way shared the tender affection af-fection of her overflowing heart When a very little girl she believed dolls were quite as much alive a real babies and If they lost heads the i or arms missing members would grow again This was i gow wa because when her babies suffered an accident and she went weeping to her I father he would gravely assure her that all dolly needed was an Interview with the family physician Putting the toy in his pocket he would pretend toe > to-e off to the doctors Instead of course he went straight to a toy shop had the I doll repaired and returned her whole and hearty to his daughter When at 1 years of age George Sand heard some one laugh at the idea of so big a girl still playingMvth dolls like Mrs Carlyle she concluded to give them up With tears and hearty hugs she bade every one of them adieu and locked them in r garret closet At first the separation from her adored playfellows was almost more than she could bear and every day she would sit for an hour or two sad and tearful outside the closet door sometimes whispering words of comfort through the keyhole to the poor exiles but she never broke her vow to have done with dolls and by and by they were forgotten forgot-ten Surely it is hardly to be wondered at that Florence Nightingales dolls all enjoyed en-joyed very indifferent health Time and time again fell disease stalked through the nursery and laid every doll so low that their Jives were quite despaired Qf but the little girl who was to grow up to be such a ministering angel to thousands thou-sands in real suffering Always pulled her babies through their worst attacks One night youthful Miss i Florence assured as-sured her nurse she could not sossibly go to bed since a feverish rag baby would eed to be watched every hour It was only whqn both nurse and mother assured the little girl that one of them would sit right beside the invalid that Florence consented to go to bed Once or twice thinking the child was fast asleep the nurse attempted to leave her post but Florence was awake in an instant in-stant At midnight a second effort was made to desert the sufferer but the child woke again and In the end the nurse was obliged to remain beside the coils bed until Miss Nightingale was up bright and early in the morniasr and able to pronounce the patient vastly vast-ly improved |