ired that day a shot that still echoes round the world. An
affair--let us parallel the Cannonade of Valmy and call it the Cannonade of
Sandgate--occurred, a shooting between opposed ranks of soldiers, a
shooting not very different in spirit--but how different in results!--from
the prehistoric warfare of catapult and garter. "But suppose," said
his antagonists; "suppose somehow one could move the men!" and
therewith opened a new world of belligerence.

The matter went no further with Mr J. K. J. The seed lay for a time
gathering strength, and then began to germinate with another friend, Mr
W. To Mr W. was broached the idea: "I believe that if one set up a few
obstacles on the floor, volumes of the British Encyclopedia and so
forth, to make a Country, and moved these soldiers and guns about, one
could have rather a good game, a kind of kriegspiel."...

Primitive attempts to realise the dream were interrupted by a great
rustle and chattering of lady visitors. They regarded the objects upon
the floor with the empty disdain of their sex for all imaginative
things.

But the writer had in those days a very dear friend, a man too ill for
long excursions or vigorous sports (he has been dead now these six
years), of a very sweet companionable disposition, a hearty jester
and full of the spirit of play. To him the idea was broached more
fruitfully. We got two forces of toy soldiers, set out a lumpish
Encyclopaedic land upon the carpet, and began to play. We arranged to
move in alternate moves: first one moved all his force and then the
other; an infantry-man could move one foot at each move, a cavalry-man
two, a gun two, and it might fire six shots; and if a man was moved up
to touch another man, then we tossed up and decided which man was dead.
So we made a game, which was not a good game, but which was very amusing
once or twice. The men were packed under the lee of fat volumes, while
the guns, animated by a spirit of their own, banged away at any exposed
head, or prowled about in search of a shot. Occasionally men came into
contact, with remarkable results. Rash is the man who trusts his life
to the spin of a coin. One impossible paladin slew in succession nine
men and turned defeat to victory, to the extreme exasperation of the
strategist who had led those victims to their doom. This inordinate
factor of chance eliminated play; the individual freedom of guns turned
battles into scandals of crouching concealment; there was to