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
Of course the setting-out of the city is half the game. Then you devise
incidents. As I wanted to photograph the particular set-out for the
purpose of illustrating this account, I took a larger share in the
arrangement than I usually do. It was necessary to get everything into
the picture, to ensure a light background that would throw up some of
the trees, prevent too much overlapping, and things like that. When the
photographing was over, matters became more normal. I left the
schoolroom, and when I returned I found that the group of riflemen
which had been converging on the publichouse had been sharply recalled
to duty, and were trotting in a disciplined, cheerless way towards the
railway station. The elephant had escaped from the zoo into the Blue
Ward, and was being marched along by a military patrol. The originally
scattered boy scouts were being paraded. G. P. W. had demolished the
shop of the Jokil Company, and was building a Red End station near the
bend. The stock of the Jokil Company had passed into the hands of the
adjacent storekeepers. Then the town hall ceremonies came to an end and
the guard marched off. Then G. P. W. demolished the rifle-range, and
ran a small branch of the urban railway uphill to the town hall door,
and on into the zoological gardens. This was only the beginning of a
period of enterprise in transit, a small railway boom. A number of
halts of simple construction sprang up. There was much making of
railway tickets, of a size that enabled passengers to stick their heads
through the middle and wear them as a Mexican does his blanket. Then a
battery of artillery turned up in the High Street and there was talk of
fortifications. Suppose wild Indians were to turn up across the plains
to the left and attack the town! Fate still has toy drawers untouched...
So things will go on till putting-away night on Friday. Then we shall
pick up the roofs and shove them away among the books, return the
clockwork engines very carefully to their boxes, for engines are
fragile things, stow the soldiers and civilians and animals in their
nests of drawers, burn the trees again--this time they are sweet-bay;
and all the joys and sorrows and rivalries and successes of Blue End
and Red End will pass, and follow Carthage and Nineveh, the empire of
Aztec and Roman, the arts of Etruria and the palaces of Crete, and the
plannings and contrivings of innumerable myriads of children, into the
limbo of games exhausted ... it may be, leaving some profit, in
thoughts widened, in strengthened apprehensions; it may be, leaving
nothing but a memory that dies.
Section IV
FUNICULARS, MARBLE TOWERS, CASTLES AND WAR GAMES, BUT VERY LITTLE OF
WAR GAMES
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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