We could do with a judge and lawyers, or a box of vestrymen. It is true
that we can buy Salvation Army lasses and football players, but we are
cold to both of these. We have, of course, boy scouts. With such boxes
of civilians we could have much more fun than with the running,
marching, swashbuckling soldiery that pervades us. They drive us to
reviews; and it is only emperors, kings, and very silly small boys who
can take an undying interest in uniforms and reviews.

And lastly, of our railways, let me merely remark here that we have
always insisted upon one uniform gauge and everything we buy fits into
and develops our existing railway system. Nothing is more indicative of
the wambling sort of parent and a coterie of witless, worthless uncles
than a heap of railway toys of different gauges and natures in the
children's playroom. And so, having told you of the material we have,
let me now tell you of one or two games (out of the innumerable many)
that we have played. Of course, in this I have to be a little
artificial. Actual games of the kind I am illustrating here have been
played by us, many and many a time, with joy and happy invention and no
thought of publication. They have gone now, those games, into that
vaguely luminous and iridescent into which happiness have tried out
again points in world of memories all love-engendering must go. But we
our best to set them and recall the good them here.

Section II

THE GAME OF THE WONDERFUL ISLANDS

In this game the floor is the sea. Half--rather the larger half because
of some instinctive right of primogeniture--is assigned to the elder of
my two sons (he is, as it were, its Olympian), and the other half goes
to his brother. We distribute our boards about the sea in an
archipelagic manner. We then dress our islands, objecting strongly to
too close a scrutiny of our proceedings until we have done. Here, in
the illustration, is such an archipelago ready for its explorers, or
rather on the verge of exploration. There are altogether four islands,
two to the reader's right and two to the left, and the nearer ones are
the more northerly; it is as many as we could get into the camera. The
northern island to the right is most advanced in civilization, and is
chiefly temple. That temple has a flat roof, diversified by domes made
of half Easter eggs and cardboard cones. These are surmounted by
decorative work of a flamboyant character in plasticine, designed by G.
P. W. A