Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars"Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
General
Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars"
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Games; Games -- Juvenile literature
Passing in front of the town hall, and turning to the right, we
approach the zoological gardens. Here we pass two of our civilians: a
gentleman in black, a lady, and a large boy scout, presumably their
son. We enter the gardens, which are protected by a bearded janitor,
and remark at once a band of three performing dogs, who are, as the
guide-book would say, "discoursing sweet music." In neither ward of the
city does there seem to be the slightest restraint upon the use of
musical instruments. It is no place for neurotic people.
The gardens contain the inevitable elephants, camels (which we breed,
and which are therefore in considerable numbers), a sitting bear,
brought from last game's caves, goats from the same region, tamed and
now running loose in the gardens, dwarf elephants, wooden nondescripts,
and other rare creatures. The keepers wear a uniform not unlike that of
railway guards and porters. We wander through the gardens, return,
descend the hill by the school of musketry, where soldiers are to be
seen shooting at the butts, pass through the paddock of the old farm,
and so return to the railway station, extremely gratified by all we
have seen, and almost equally divided in our minds between the merits
and attractiveness of either ward. A clockwork train comes clattering
into the station, we take our places, somebody hoots or whistles for
the engine (which can't), the signal is knocked over in the excitement
of the moment, the train starts, and we "wave a long, regretful
farewell to the salubrious cheerfulness of Chamois City."
You see now how we set out and the spirit in which we set out our
towns. It demands but the slightest exercise of the imagination to
devise a hundred additions and variations of the scheme. You can make
picture-galleries--great fun for small boys who can draw; you can make
factories; you can plan out flower-gardens--which appeals very strongly
to intelligent little girls; your town hall may become a fortified
castle; or you may put the whole town on boards and make a Venice of
it, with ships and boats upon its canals, and bridges across them. We
used to have some very serviceable ships of cardboard, with flat
bottoms; and then we used to have a harbor, and the ships used to sail
away to distant rooms, and even into the garden, and return with the
most remarkable cargoes, loads of nasturtium-stem logs, for example. We
had sacks then, made of glove-fingers, and several toy cranes. I
suppose we could find most of these again if we hunted for them. Once,
with this game fresh in our we went to see the docks, which struck us
as just our old harbor game magnified.
"I say, Daddy," said one of us in a quiet corner, wistfully, as one who
speaks knowingly against the probabilities of the case, and yet with a
faint, thin hope, "couldn't we play just for a little with these sacks
... until some-body comes?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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