Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III SOME HISTORIC DOLLS AND OTHERS OLD dolls are among the things that are taking on new values in this day and generation. Battered and bruised almost beyond recognition, various dolls that were once fondled affectionately, loved beyond their deserts, have been brought from that limbo to which are relegated forgotten and disused things and restored to as much of their pristine beauty as possible. They are respected and revered for their great age like women who have reached that period of life when they prefer to add a few years to their age rather than to subtract them as they did when younger. That queens were not above playing with dolls, even when they were quite grown, we have abundant evidence. "Mary Stuart brought with her to Scotland from Paris lovely French dolls, which she set apart for ornament rather than use, but her chief delight was in the dolls she and her Marys had made anddressed." The beautiful queen was devoted to her family of dolls, not only during her childhood in France, but later, when she went, a young and lovely widow, to Scotland. She is reported to have spent much time with her dolls, perhaps to distract her mind from the machinations of her nobles who wished to rule Scotland in her stead. When she had leisure she would gather her Marys together and set them to work with her making rag dolls, and little beds and bedding fashioned like her own. Queen Mary took upon herself the making of the small sheets and bolster covers for the beds, and while they sewed they would discourse lovingly of France and the pleasant life they had left behind them. Queen Elizabeth had a great passion for dolls in her youth, and among the collection she left was a very curious specimen of the doll-maker's art, composed entirely of the bark of trees,...