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
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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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