It is not a typical product of native industry, but
even that does not make it much easier for us to grasp the secret of
its success over there. It would seem that nearly all Transatlantic
humour, indigenous or adoptive, is apt, like certain wines, to suffer
in the process of sea-transit.
Her "Poor Little Rich Girl" is poor because her parents are too
rich. Her father is too busy with finance and her mother with social
climbing to spare time for their daughter's company, so they leave
her to the care of governesses and menials. Her nurse, anxious for
an evening out at a picture-palace, gives the child an overdose of
sleeping-mixture, with the result that she nearly dies of it. In the
course of delirious dreams she finds herself in the "Tell-Tale Forest"
(which threatens to recall _The Palace of Truth_), and here all
the picturesque phrases which she has been in the childish habit of
misinterpreting in their literal sense--"a bee in the bonnet," to
"ride hobbies," "to play ducks and drakes," "to pay the piper," and so
forth--are realised in human or animal form. With these are mixed the
familiar figures of her waking life, all of them exposed in their true
characters so that you can distinguish the devotion of the doctor (who
now appears in pink because he likes riding hobbies) and the affection
of the teddy-bear (now expanded to human proportions) from the
serpentine nature of the governess and the double-faced dealings of
the nurse.
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