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