ve only too good reason to know, if you are writing an
article you can say anything that comes into your head.

.....

Broadly, then, what keeps adults from joining in children's games is,
generally speaking, not that they have no pleasure in them; it is simply
that they have no leisure for them. It is that they cannot afford the
expenditure of toil and time and consideration for so grand and grave a
scheme. I have been myself attempting for some time past to complete
a play in a small toy theatre, the sort of toy theatre that used to be
called Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured; only that I drew and coloured
the figures and scenes myself. Hence I was free from the degrading
obligation of having to pay either a penny or twopence; I only had to
pay a shilling a sheet for good cardboard and a shilling a box for bad
water colours. The kind of miniature stage I mean is probably familiar
to every one; it is never more than a development of the stage which
Skelt made and Stevenson celebrated.

But though I have worked much harder at the toy theatre than I ever
worked at any tale or article, I cannot finish it; the work seems
too heavy for me. I have to break off and betake myself to lighter
employments; such as the biographies of great men. The play of "St.
George and the Dragon," over which I have burnt the midnight oil (you
must colour the thing by lamplight because that is how it will be seen),
still lacks most conspicuously, alas! two wings of the Sultan's Palace,
and also some comprehensible and workable way of getting up the curtain.

All this gives me a feeling touching the real meaning of immortality.
In this world we cannot have pure pleasure. This is partly because
pure pleasure would be dangerous to us and to our neighbours. But it is
partly because pure pleasure is a great deal too much trouble. If I am
ever in any other and better world, I hope that I shall have enough
time to play with nothing but toy theatres; and I hope that I shall have
enough divine and superhuman energy to act at least one play in them
without a hitch.

.....

Meanwhile the philosophy of toy theatres is worth any one's
consideration. All the essential morals which modern men need to learn
could be deduced from this toy. Artistically considered, it reminds us
of the main principle of art, the principle which is in most danger
of being forgotten in our time. I mean the fact that art consists of
limitation; the fact that art is limitatio