Floor Games | Page 6

boxes of servants, boxes of street traffic, smart sets, and so forth. We
could do with a judge and lawyers, or a box of vestrymen. It is true that
we can buy Salvation Army lasses and football players, but we are cold
to both of these. We have, of course, boy scouts. With such boxes of
civilians we could have much more fun than with the running,
marching, swashbuckling soldiery that pervades us. They drive us to
reviews; and it is only emperors, kings, and very silly small boys who
can take an undying interest in uniforms and reviews.
And lastly, of our railways, let me merely remark here that we have
always insisted upon one uniform gauge and everything we buy fits
into and develops our existing railway system. Nothing is more
indicative of the wambling sort of parent and a coterie of witless,
worthless uncles than a heap of railway toys of different gauges and
natures in the children's playroom. And so, having told you of the
material we have, let me now tell you of one or two games (out of the

innumerable many) that we have played. Of course, in this I have to be
a little artificial. Actual games of the kind I am illustrating here have
been played by us, many and many a time, with joy and happy
invention and no thought of publication. They have gone now, those
games, into that vaguely luminous and iridescent into which happiness
have tried out again points in world of memories all love-engendering
must go. But we our best to set them and recall the good them here.
Section II THE GAME OF THE WONDERFUL ISLANDS
In this game the floor is the sea. Half--rather the larger half because of
some instinctive right of primogeniture--is assigned to the elder of my
two sons (he is, as it were, its Olympian), and the other half goes to his
brother. We distribute our boards about the sea in an archipelagic
manner. We then dress our islands, objecting strongly to too close a
scrutiny of our proceedings until we have done. Here, in the illustration,
is such an archipelago ready for its explorers, or rather on the verge of
exploration. There are altogether four islands, two to the reader's right
and two to the left, and the nearer ones are the more northerly; it is as
many as we could get into the camera. The northern island to the right
is most advanced in civilization, and is chiefly temple. That temple has
a flat roof, diversified by domes made of half Easter eggs and
cardboard cones. These are surmounted by decorative work of a
flamboyant character in plasticine, designed by G. P. W. An oriental
population crowds the courtyard and pours out upon the roadway. Note
the grotesque plasticine monsters who guard the portals, also by G. P.
W., who had a free hand with the architecture of this remarkable
specimen of eastern religiosity. They are nothing, you may be sure, to
the gigantic idols inside, out of the reach of the sacrilegious camera. To
the right is a tropical thatched hut. The thatched roof is really that nice
ribbed paper that comes round bottles--a priceless boon to these games.
All that comes into the house is saved for us. The owner of the hut
lounges outside the door. He is a dismounted cavalry-corps man, and
he owns one cow. His fence, I may note, belonged to a little wooden
farm we bought in Switzerland. Its human inhabitants are scattered; its
beasts follow a precarious living as wild guinea-pigs on the islands to
the south.
Your attention is particularly directed to the trees about and behind the
temple, which thicken to a forest on the further island to the right.

These trees we make of twigs taken from trees and bushes in the garden,
and stuck into holes in our boards. Formerly we lived in a house with a
little wood close by, and our forests were wonderful. Now we are
restricted to our garden, and we could get nothing for this set out but
jasmine and pear. Both have wilted a little, and are not nearly such
spirited trees as you can make out of fir trees, for instance. It is for
these woods chiefly that we have our planks perforated with little holes.
No tin trees can ever be so plausible and various and jolly as these.
With a good garden to draw upon one can make terrific sombre woods,
and then lie down and look through them at lonely horsemen or
wandering beasts.
That further island on the right is a less settled country than the island
of the temple. Camels, you note, run wild there; there is a sort of dwarf
elephant, similar to the now extinct