Floor Games | Page 5

occupations, but certainly he was one of
those shining and distinguished uncles that tower up at times above the
common levels of humanity. At times, when we consider our derived
and undeserved share of his inheritance and count the joys it gives us,
we have projected half in jest and half in earnest the putting together of
a little exemplary book upon the subject of such exceptional men:
Celebrated Uncles, it should be called; and it should stir up all who

read it to some striving at least towards the glories of the avuncular
crown. What this great benefactor did was to engage a deserving
unemployed carpenter through an entire winter making big boxes of
wooden bricks for the almost innumerable nephews and nieces with
which an appreciative circle of brothers and sisters had blessed him.
There are whole bricks 4-1/2 inches x 2-1/4 x 1-1/8; and there are
quarters-- called by those previous owners (who have now ascended to,
we hope but scarcely believe, a happier life near the ceiling) "piggys."
You note how these sizes fit into the sizes of the boards, and of each
size--we have never counted them, but we must have hundreds. We can
pave a dozen square yards of floor with them.
How utterly we despise the silly little bricks of the toyshops! They are
too small to make a decent home for even the poorest lead soldiers,
even if there were hundreds of them, and there are never enough, never
nearly enough; even if you take one at a time and lay it down and say,
"This is a house," even then there are not enough. We see rich people,
rich people out of motor cars, rich people beyond the dreams of avarice,
going into toyshops and buying these skimpy, sickly, ridiculous
pseudo- boxes of bricklets, because they do not know what to ask for,
and the toyshops are just the merciless mercenary enemies of youth and
happiness --so far, that is, as bricks are concerned. Their unfortunate
under- parented offspring mess about with these gifts, and don't make
very much of them, and put them away; and you see their consequences
in after life in the weakly-conceived villas and silly suburbs that people
have built all round big cities. Such poor under-nourished nurseries
must needs fall back upon the Encyclopedia Britannica, and even that is
becoming flexible on India paper! But our box of bricks almost
satisfies. With our box of bricks we can scheme and build, all three of
us, for the best part of the hour, and still have more bricks in the box.
So much now for the bricks. I will tell later how we use cartridge paper
and cardboard and other things to help in our and of the decorative
make of plasticine. Of course, it goes without saying that we despise
those foolish, expensive, made-up wooden and pasteboard castles that
are sold in shops--playing with them is like playing with somebody
else's dead game in a state of rigor mortis. Let me now say a little about
toy soldiers and the world to which they belong. Toy soldiers used to
be flat, small creatures in my own boyhood, in comparison with the

magnificent beings one can buy to-day. There has been an enormous
improvement in our national physique in this respect. Now they stand
nearly two inches high and look you broadly in the face, and they have
the movable arms and alert intelligence of scientifically exercised men.
You get five of them mounted or nine afoot in a box for a small price.
We three like those of British manufacture best; other makes are of
incompatible sizes, and we have a rule that saves much trouble, that all
red coats belong to G. P. W., and all other colored coats to F. R. W., all
gifts, bequests, and accidents notwithstanding. Also we have sailors;
but, since there are no red-coated sailors, blue counts as red.
Then we have "beefeaters," (Footnote; The warders in the Tower of
London are called "beefeaters"; the origin of the term is obscure.)
Indians, Zulus, for whom there are special rules. We find we can buy
lead dogs, cats, lions, tigers, horses, camels, cattle, and elephants of a
reasonably corresponding size, and we have also several boxes of
railway porters, and some soldiers we bought in Hesse-Darmstadt that
we pass off on an unsuspecting home world as policemen. But we want
civilians very badly. We found a box of German from an exaggerated
curse of militarism, and even the grocer wears epaulettes. This might
please Lord Roberts and Mr. Leo Maxse, but it certainly does not
please us. I wish, indeed, that we could buy boxes of tradesmen: a blue
butcher, a white baker with a loaf of standard bread, a merchant or so;