Floor Games | Page 7

kind of which one finds skeletons
in Malta, pigs, a red parrot, and other such creatures, of lead and wood.
The pear-trees are fine. It is those which have attracted white settlers (I
suppose they are), whose thatched huts are to be seen both upon the
beach and in-land. By the huts on the beach lie a number of pear-tree
logs; but a raid of negroid savages from the to the left is in the only
settler is the man in a adjacent island progress, and clearly visible
rifleman's uniform running inland for help. Beyond, peeping out among
the trees, are the supports he seeks.
These same negroid savages are as bold as they are ferocious. They
cross arms of the sea upon their rude canoes, made simply of a strip of
cardboard. Their own island, the one to the south-left, is a rocky
wilderness containing caves. Their chief food is the wild-goat, but in
pursuit of these creatures you will also sometimes find the brown bear,
who sits--he is small but perceptible to the careful student--in the
mouth of his cave. Here, too, you will distinguish small guinea pig- like
creatures of wood, in happier days the inhabitants of that Swiss farm.
Sunken rocks off this island are indicated by a white foam which takes
the form of letters, and you will also note a whirlpool between the two
islands to the right.
Finally comes the island nearest to the reader on the left. This also is
wild and rocky, inhabited not by negroid blacks, but by Indians, whose
tents, made by F. R. W. out of ordinary brown paper and adorned with
chalk totems of a rude and characteristic kind, pour forth their fierce

and well-armed inhabitants at the intimation of an invader. The rocks
on this island, let me remark, have great mineral wealth. Among them
are to be found not only sheets and veins of silver paper, but great
nuggets of metal, obtained by the melting down of hopelessly broken
soldiers in an iron spoon. Note, too, the peculiar and romantic shell
beach of this country. It is an island of exceptional interest to the
geologist and scientific explorer. The Indians, you observe, have
domesticated one leaden and one wooden cow.
This is how the game would be set out. Then we build ships and
explore these islands, but in these pictures the ships are represented as
already arriving. The ships are built out of our wooden bricks on flat
keels made of two wooden pieces of 9 x 4-1/2; inches, which are very
convenient to push about over the floor. Captain G. P. W. is steaming
into the bay between the eastern and western islands. He carries heavy
guns, his ship bristles with an extremely aggressive soldiery, who
appear to be blazing away for the mere love of the thing. (I suspect him
of Imperialist intentions.) Captain F. R. W. is apparently at anchor
between his northern and southern islands. His ship is of a slightly
more pacific type. I note on his deck a lady and a gentleman (of
German origin) with a bag, two of our all too rare civilians. No doubt
the bag contains samples and a small conversation dictionary in the
negroid dialects. (I think F. R. W. may turn out to be a Liberal.)
Perhaps he will sail on and rescue the raided huts, perhaps he will land
and build a jetty, and begin mining among the rocks to fill his hold with
silver. Perhaps the natives will kill and eat the gentleman with the bag.
All that is for Captain F. R. W. to decide.
You see how the game goes on. We land and alter things, and build and
rearrange, and hoist paper flags on pins, and subjugate populations, and
confer all the blessings of civilization upon these lands. We keep them
going for days. And at last, as we begin to tire of them, comes the
scrubbing brush, and we must burn our trees and dismantle our islands,
and put our soldiers in the little nests of drawers, and stand the island
boards up against the wall, and put everything away. Then perhaps,
after a few days, we begin upon some other such game, just as we feel
disposed. But it is never quite the same game, never. Another time it
may be wildernesses for example, and the boards are hills, and never a
drop of water is to be found except for the lakes and rivers we may

mark out in chalk. But after one example others are easy, and next I
will tell you of our way of making towns.
Section III OF THE BUILDING OF CITIES
WE always build twin cities, like London and Westminster, or
Buda-Pesth, because two of us always want, both of them,