DOLLS 



tied with thongs at waist and neck, and with features 

 only visible to the fond little make-believe mother. 



But I am encroaching on the unknown things of 

 the Eskimo past : wood and sealskin moulder and 

 perish : time crumbles them to dust ; and no visible 

 proof of such dolls remains excepting the inborn 

 skill that the Eskimos have in making and dressing 

 dolls. 



Some of the little girls are the proud owners of 

 flaxen-haired dollies from the English shops, but most 

 of them are content with the native article, whittled 

 from a stick of firewood by a fond father ; but what- 

 ever sort of doll it be, the little mother dresses it in 

 Eskimo clothes. I have seen the children sitting on 

 the floor, planning and chattering, cutting out clothes 

 for their dolls after the unchanging pattern, making 

 dickys and trousers with a due eye to the economy 

 of cloth, and learning, all unconsciously, to cut and 

 make the real clothes. By daytime the doll is an 

 Eskimo baby, poked feet first into its little mother's 

 hood, and marched from side to side of the hut or 

 among the houses in the village : and, if she does not 

 know that she is watched, the little girl will put on 

 all the serious air of motherhood, and sway her body 

 to and fro, hushing and humming to get the fractious 

 baby to sleep. At night the child undresses her 

 doll, and lays it to rest on a scrap of reindeer skin 

 spread on a toy bedstead of boards, and covers it 

 with a gay quilt, and leaves it to sleep while she 

 clambers into her own wooden bed and pulls her own 

 reindeer skin or patchwork counterpane over her. It 

 is the little girl's chief game, the serious game of 

 learning to be grown up. 



The boys are playing the same game in their own 



