OF THE BUILDING OF CITIES

Category: Of The Building Of Cities

WE always build twin cities, like London and Westminster, or Buda-Pesth,
because two of us always want, both of them, to be mayors and municipal
councils, and it makes for local freedom and happiness to arrange it so;
but when steam railways or street railways are involved we have our
rails in common, and we have an excellent law that rails must be laid
down and switches kept open in such a manner that anyone feeling so
disposed may send a through train from their own station back to their
own station again without needless negotiation or the personal invasion
of anybody else's administrative area. It is an undesirable thing to
have other people bulging over one's houses, standing in one's open
spaces, and, in extreme cases, knocking down and even treading on one's
citizens. It leads at times to explanations that are afterwards
regretted.

We always have twin cities, or at the utmost stage of coalescence a city
with two wards, Red End and Blue End; we mark the boundaries very
carefully, and our citizens have so much local patriotism (Mr.
Chesterton will learn with pleasure) that they stray but rarely over
that thin little streak of white that bounds their municipal allegiance.
Sometimes we have an election for mayor; it is like a census but very
abusive, and Red always wins. Only citizens with two legs and at least
one arm and capable of standing up may vote, and voters may poll on
horseback; boy scouts and women and children do not vote, though there
is a vigorous agitation to remove these disabilities. Zulus and foreign-
looking persons, such as East Indian cavalry and American Indians, are
also disfranchised. So are riderless horses and camels; but the elephant
has never attempted to vote on any occasion, and does not seem to desire
the privilege. It influences public opinion quite sufficiently as it is
by nodding its head.

We have set out and I have photographed one of our cities to illustrate
more clearly the amusement of the game. Red End is to the reader's
right, and includes most of the hill on which the town stands, a shady
zoological garden, the town hall, a railway tunnel through the hill, a
museum (away in the extreme right-hand corner), a church, a rifle range,
and a shop. Blue End has the railway station, four or five shops,
several homes, a hotel, and a farm-house, close to the railway station.
The boundary drawn by me as overlord (who also made the hills and
tunnels and appointed the trees to grow) runs irregularly between the
two shops nearest the cathedral, over the shoulder in front of the town
hall, and between the farm and the rifle range.

The nature of the hills I have already explained, and this time we have
had no lakes or ornamental water. These are very easily made out of a
piece of glass--the glass lid of a box for example--laid upon silver
paper. Such water becomes very readily populated by those celluloid
seals and swans and ducks that are now so common. Paper fish appear
below the surface and may be peered at by the curious. But on this
occasion we have nothing of the kind, nor have we made use of a green-
colored tablecloth we sometimes use to drape our hills. Of course, a
large part of the fun of this game lies in the witty incorporation of
all sorts of extraneous objects. But the incorporation must be witty, or
you may soon convert the whole thing into an incoherent muddle of half-
good ideas.


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