OF THE BUILDING OF CITIES 3
Category:
Funiculars, Marble Towers, Castles And War Games, But Very Little Of War Games
Proceeding on our way past the Cherry Tree, and resisting cosy
invitation of its portals, we come to the shopping quarter of the town.
The stock in windows is made by hand out of plasticine. We note the meat
and hams of "Mr. Woddy," the cabbages and carrots of "Tod & Brothers,"
the general activities of the "Jokil Co." shopmen. It is de rigueur with
our shop assistants that they should wear white helmets. In the street,
boy scouts go to and fro, a wagon clatters by; most of the adult
population is about its business, and a red-coated band plays along the
roadway. Contrast this animated scene with the mysteries of sea and
forest, rock and whirlpool, in our previous game. Further on is the big
church or cathedral. It is built in an extremely debased Gothic style;
it reminds us most of a church we once surveyed during a brief visit to
Rotterdam on our way up the Rhine. A solitary boy scout, mindful of the
views of Lord Haldane, enters its high portal. Passing the cathedral, we
continue to the museum. This museum is no empty boast; it contains
mineral specimens, shells--such great shells as were found on the
beaches of our previous game--the Titanic skulls of extinct rabbits and
cats, and other such wonders. The slender curious may lie down on the
floor and peep in at the windows.
"We now," says the guide-book, "retrace our steps to the shops, and
then, turning to the left, ascend under the trees up the terraced hill
on which stands the Town Hall. This magnificent building is surmounted
by a colossal statue of a chamois, the work of a Wengen artist; it is in
two stories, with a battlemented roof, and a crypt (entrance to right of
steps) used for the incarceration of offenders. It is occupied by the
town guard, who wear 'beefeater' costumes of ancient origin."
Note the red parrot perched on the battlements; it lives tame in the
zoological gardens, and is of the same species as one we formerly
observed in our archipelago. Note, too, the brisk cat-and-dog encounter
below. Steps descend in wide flights down the hillside into Blue End.
The two couchant lions on either side of the steps are in plasticine,
and were executed by that versatile artist, who is also mayor of Red
End, G. P. W. He is present. Our photographer has hit upon a happy
moment in the history of this town, and a conversation of the two mayors
is going on upon the terrace before the palace. F. R. W., mayor of Blue
End, stands on the steps in the costume of an admiral; G. P. W. is on
horseback (his habits are equestrian) on the terrace. The town guard
parades in their honor, and up the hill a number of musicians (a little
hidden by trees) ride on gray horses towards them.
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?"
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.
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OF THE BUILDING OF CITIES 2
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