n
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

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
all