THE MAN WAS LEAVING HIS OWN FRONT DOOR
The TOY SHOP
A Romantic Story of Lincoln the Man
HARPER & BROTHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
MCMVIII
Copyright, 1908, by Harper & Brothers.
All rights reserved.
Published September, 1908.
The child is eternal, and so are toys and tears and laughter. When thehouse is put in order by strange men, when the clothes that were wornand the tools that were used are put away, there will be found an upperroom full of toys. These remain.
THE TOY-SHOP
THE Man was leaving his own front door. On thesteps he paused and looked sombrely back. The white pillars of thefacade rose before him in stately fashion. They reminded him of the carehe was evading for the moment, and he sighed. Though he shut his eyesdeterminedly, he knew that another grim building just beyond, the usualend of his journeying, demanded him, and he sighed again. This timethere was something more than weariness in the sound.
From around the corner of the house, which almost hid from view thewhite tents of the Home Guard, ran a child. He was bright-faced, andmagnificent in a miniature officer's uniform.
"Oh, papa-day!" he cried. "Never mind the curtains for my stage. You arealways too busy now to see my plays, anyway—!" He interrupted himselfto fling this in petulantly: "But get lots of soldiers—and one companyof cavalry. I can't get him surrounded without two more companies—andsix cannon!"
The child lisped so in his eagerness that no one but his father couldhave understood him, and his father was so lost in his gloomy thoughtthat he did not know the child had spoken. When the expected reply didnot come, the boy looked his wonder.
"Papa-day—papa-day!" he cried, giving the man a little push. "I wantsome soldiers!"
Startled out of his sadness, the father looked at the child.
"Soldiers? All right, son; I'm off for a walk now. I saw a shop theother day."
He walked off. It was not a beautiful street down which he turned. Eventhe fine width of it suggested an inflated sense of its own importance.There were some good lines in the structure at the first corner, but thebuilding was unfinished, and drooped sadly, lik