HOW TOYS EDUCATED AN EMPEROR.
By J. T. Headland
WHEN Kwang Hsu was a child, there were two foreign stores in Peking that had been established without permission from the Chinese Government. As they were on Legation Street, they seem to have been too unimportant to attract official attention. Yet these same stores were destined to have a mighty influence on the future of China. One of them was kept by an illiterate Dane, who sold foreign tops, notions, and dry goods such as might please the Chinese, or be of use to the scanty European population of the capital. By chance some eunuchs from the Imperial palace bought toys in this shop for His Infant Majesty. As the baby Emperor grew, the business of the Dane shopkeeper increased. His stock became larger and more varied. And the Emperor remained a profitable customer. Musical cats, dogs, and sheep, horns, guns, trains of cars, striking clocks, and Swiss watches, all were bought in turn by eunuchs from the palace. As the Emperor grew to boyhood, the Danish shopkeeper supplied toys suitable to his years from his inexhaustible shelves. To understand how searching an influence these products of far-distant lands must have had on the growing mind of the Emperor, you must know that he was shut out from the world, shut out even from his own people, by three strong walls. He never11left the Forbidden City except in a closed chair or in a closed cart. Every side street was barred from him by hanging canvas of mats. He was a prisoner and slave in the palace of his birthright. If custom forbade his going out to see the world, it did not prevent the world from reaching him in the shape of wares sold by the Dane in Legation Street. These were no longer toys, altho such they seemed to the Emperor. An electric railroad was built for him in the palace grounds, on which he rode as our children ride on merry-go-rounds. For him an electric plant was built in the Forbidden City, and the palace was lighted with incandescent lamps. He experimented with miniature telegraph and telephone instruments. Officials that sought Imperial favor scoured the port cities to find new toys for His Majesty. They came to Peking University and bought our phonograph. They got for him gramophones, music boxes, aeolians, and magnificent clocks that struck the hours with music or with the song of birds. All the resources of modern invention in the West were tapped to procure toys for the Emperor Kwang Hsu. Once the assiduous Danish shopkeeper had a sleigh made for him in Europe. The sleigh was a marvel of ingenuity with its foot-warmers, mirrors, clocks, cushions of yellow silk, and figureheads in the shape of golden dragons. As the boy grew older, his tastes changed. There were clear indications of mental growth as the years advanced. He began to wish to know the literature of the countries that produced the fairy toys and wonderful devices of his boyhood pleasures. He had two teachers appointed to instruct him in English. One of these teachers was the grandfather of a young man to whom I had taught English in return for lessons in Chinese. In this way I learned much of what was going on in the recesses of the palace. I was informed by those who had been into the Emperor’s private apartments that they were more like a museum than like living-rooms, so crowded were they with complicated mechanisms and toys.—J. T. Headland.