is a desert with a long train of camels very far off, coming
slowly near, and then passing and gradually disappearing in the far
distance. Counting a million is also a good way.

Games for Convalescents

A good thing to do in bed when getting better from an illness is to
cut out pictures for scrapbooks. Any kind of cutting out can be done,
as the scissors and paper are very light and do not, therefore, tire
the arms. "Patience" (see page 76) is also a good bed game, because it
needs very little thought.

Bed Soldiers

In _A Child's Garden of Verses_ there is a poem called "The Land of
Counterpane," which tells what a little boy did when he was ill, lying
among the pillows with his toys:

And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets,
Or brought my trees and houses out
And planted cities all about.

China Animals

Dolls are, of course, perfectly at home in bed when you are ill, but
there is even more interest in a menagerie. On this subject it would
be difficult to do better than quote from a letter from E. M. R., who
has 590 china animals, mostly in families and all named. She began
this magnificent collection with a family of monkeys.

The mother was called Sally, her eldest son Mungo, the next
Pin-ceri, another, eating a nut, Jock, and the youngest, a
sweet little girl monkey, Ness. I was soon given a family of
three foxes, Reynard, Brushtail, and Whitepad, and from that
time to the present my collection has been growing. I soon
had enough to fill a shelf in a cabinet, and I turned my
doll's-house into a boarding-school for the little animals
with a big pig as headmaster. But when my collection rose to
400 animals, I had too many children to be all boarders at
the school, so some had to be day-scholars, and the
headmaster was changed to a green frog who swam beautifully,
and who was assisted by two swans, a duck, a fish, two
crocodiles, and a seal, who all swam. Another frog taught the
children swimming by tying a piece of string round their
bodies, and dangling them in the water from the edge of a
basin.

The animals' abode was now changed, and they were put into a
large cabinet containing six small shelves and one big one.

I called t