A pathetic interest is attached to the shapeless similitude of a doll named Bangwell Putt, shown facing page 370. It is in the collection at Deerfield Memorial Hall. It was cherished for eighty years by Clarissa Field of Northfield, Massachusetts, who was born blind, and whose halting but trusting rhymes of longing for the clear vision of another world are fastened to the plaything she loved in youth and in old age. Nothing more absurd could be fancied than the nomenclature "French" attached to the two shapeless, inelegant creatures, a century old, shown on pages 364 and 367. Yet gawky as they are, they show signs of hard usage, which proves them to have had a more beloved life than the case of elegant Spanish dolls, on page 389, which were evidently too fine ever to be touched. The "White House Doll" spent the days of her youth in the White House at Washington, with the children of the President, John Quincy Adams, and is still cherished by his descendants. [Illustration: French Doll] Skilful jackknives could manufacture home-made dolls' furniture. Birch bark was especially adaptable to such uses. The wicker cradles and "chaises" of babies were copied in miniature for dolls. Tin toys were scarce, for tin was not much used for domestic utensils. A tin horse and chaise over a hundred years old is shown on page 373, and a quaint plaything it is. The eternal desire of a child for something suggestive of a horse found satisfaction in home-made hobby-horses; and, when American ships wandered over the world in the India trade, they brought home to American children strange coaches and chariots of gay colors and strange woods; these were often comical copies of European shapes, sometimes astonishingly crude, but ample for the ever active imagination of a child to clothe with beautiful outlines. An old coach is shown on page 369, with the box in which it was originally packed. It is marked Leghorn, but is doubtless Chinese. [Illustration: Dolls and Furniture] [Illustration: Chinese Coach and Horses] The word "jack" as a common noun and in compound words has been held to be a general term applied to any contrivance which does the work of a boy or servant, or a simple appliance which is subjected to common usage. In French the name Jacques was a term for a young man of menial condition. The term "country jake" is of kindred sense. Jack lord, jack meddler, jackanapes, Jack Tar, smoke-jack, jack-o'-lantern, black-jack, jack-rabbit, the term jack applied to the knave in playing cards, and the expressions jack-at-a-pinch, jack in office, jack in bedlam, jack in a box, jack of all trades, and many others show the derivative meaning. Hence jack-knife may mean a boy's knife. In English dialect the word was jack-lag-knife, also jack-a-legs, in Scotch, jock-te-leg--these by a somewhat fanciful derivation said to be from Jacques de Liege, the celebrated cutler. [Illustration: Old Jack-knives]