For example, in the palace garden where little Peter used to play, the strangest things were to be met. For the mineral kingdom was just beginning to be vegetable, and the vegetable was just beginning to be animal, and the animal was just beginning to be man,--and man was just, just beginning to know about his living spirit. Do you see what _that_ means? While you looked at a mound of earth it became a bush--or a very little time afterward, as time in these things is reckoned. While you looked at a beast-shaped bush--all bushes at night are shaped like beasts--it became a living animal--or, again, a _very_ little afterward. And men had by no means got over being apes, tigers, swine, and dogs, and sometimes you hardly knew which a man was, a real man or one of these animals. And spirits were growing in men as fast as this might be. Everything, you see, lay in savage angles and wild lines. Little Peter was playing one morning in the palace garden, and such playing as it was! He would be moulding little balls of loam and fashioning them with seeds, when suddenly they would break into life as buds and then as flowers, almost as one now sees twigs of wood break into life, or as quiet cocoons become living butterflies--for the world is not so different. Or Peter would be playing with a spongy-looking mass on a rock in the brook, when it would break from its rock and go gayly swimming about, and be a fish-thing. Or he would push at a bit of ooze with a cat-tail, and a little flying life would mount abruptly and wing away. It was exciting playing in those days, and some of the things you can do in these days. Only then it was all new, so Peter could see just how wonderful it was. Now, that morning the king was walking in his palace garden. And he was troubled, for everywhere that he looked there were loose ends and rough edges, and shapeless things waiting to be fashioned, and it was so all over his kingdom. There was such a great lot to do that he could not possibly do it all alone--no king, however industrious, could have done it all. And he longed for the help of all his subjects. So when the king came on little Peter, busily making living things where none had been before, he was mightily pleased, and he sat down with the little lad on a grassy platform in the midst of the garden. “Lo, now, little lad,” said the king, “what do you play?” Instead of playing at keeping store or keeping house or at acting or hunting or exploring, little Peter was playing another game. “I’m playing it’s creation, your majesty,” he answered, “and I’m playing help the king.” “Lo, now,” said the king, “I would that all my subjects would play as well as you.” The king thought for a moment, looking out on all the savage angles and wild lines, while little Peter watched a bit of leaf mould becoming a green plant. “Summon me my hundred heralds!” the king suddenly bade his servants.