On Christmas morning, in front of the marble fireplace in the nursery at Blenheim Palace, 6-year-old Winston Churchill deployed his regiments across the carpet and set up ambushes behind the chair legs, pretending to whip the French again at Blenheim as did his famous ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough.

Amused at the child's concentration, his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, asked him if he would like someday to go into the army.

"I thought it would be splendid to command an army, so I answered YES at once," Churchill later wrote in his memoirs. "The toy soldiers turned the current of my life."

Wilbur and Orville Wright were in grade school in Dayton, Ohio, when an uncle brought them a Christmas gift from Paris: a flying mechanical toy by Penaud, the famous French toy maker. After school, the brothers began selling toys of their own invention to earn pocket money to buy the science books that would one day lead to flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C.

Young Frank Lloyd Wright erected his first building with Froebel blocks, introduced by the German educator Friedrich Froebel, who devised the kindergarten system of learning through play.

The dream world of toys is the serious business of childhood.

And, fortunately for today's multibillion-dollar toy industry, many adults throughout history never put away childish things.

English Colonists arriving at Roanoke Island in 1585 greeted the Indians with gifts of knives, glass marbles and dolls. William Penn, when he came to Philadelphia in 1699, brought with him "Letitia," a doll gorgeously gowned in velvet and brocade.

Paul Revere, who was a toy maker as well as a silversmith, made drums from nail kegs and baby rattles from gourds. In addition to playing with kites, Benjamin Franklin had a profitable sideline turning out "educational playing cards" in his Philadelphia print shop.

French novelist George Sand presented 120 plays and designed all the costumes for her puppet theater at Chateau Nohant. Joseph Haydn composed operas for Prince Nicholas Esterhazy's toy theater. Johann Goethe, the German poet and playwright, made all the scenery for the puppet theater he gave to his son, August, for Christmas in 1800. English cabinetmakers Thomas Chippendale and Thomas Sheraton fashioned elegant doll furniture.

It is not surprising that those who live by their imaginations cling more steadfastly than others to the fantasies of childhood. Cervantes, Anatole France, G. K. Chesterton and Robert Louis Stevenson were avid toy collectors. Lewis Carroll was a steady customer at Creamer's toy shop on London's Regent Street.