the
shop of the Jokil Company, and was building a Red End station near the
bend. The stock of the Jokil Company had passed into the hands of the
adjacent storekeepers. Then the town hall ceremonies came to an end and
the guard marched off. Then G. P. W. demolished the rifle-range, and
ran a small branch of the urban railway uphill to the town hall door,
and on into the zoological gardens. This was only the beginning of a
period of enterprise in transit, a small railway boom. A number of
halts of simple construction sprang up. There was much making of
railway tickets, of a size that enabled passengers to stick their heads
through the middle and wear them as a Mexican does his blanket. Then a
battery of artillery turned up in the High Street and there was talk of
fortifications. Suppose wild Indians were to turn up across the plains
to the left and attack the town! Fate still has toy drawers untouched...

So things will go on till putting-away night on Friday. Then we shall
pick up the roofs and shove them away among the books, return the
clockwork engines very carefully to their boxes, for engines are
fragile things, stow the soldiers and civilians and animals in their
nests of drawers, burn the trees again--this time they are sweet-bay;
and all the joys and sorrows and rivalries and successes of Blue End
and Red End will pass, and follow Carthage and Nineveh, the empire of
Aztec and Roman, the arts of Etruria and the palaces of Crete, and the
plannings and contrivings of innumerable myriads of children, into the
limbo of games exhausted ... it may be, leaving some profit, in
thoughts widened, in strengthened apprehensions; it may be, leaving
nothing but a memory that dies.

Section IV

FUNICULARS, MARBLE TOWERS, CASTLES AND WAR GAMES, BUT VERY LITTLE OF
WAR GAMES

I have now given two general types of floor game; but these are only
just two samples of delightful and imagination-stirring variations that
can be contrived out of the toys I have described. I will now glance
rather more shortly at some other very good uses of the floor, the
boards, the bricks, the soldiers, and the railway system--that
pentagram for exorcising the evil spirit of dulness from the lives of
little boys and girls. And first, there is a kind of lark we call
Funiculars. There are times when islands cease somehow to dazzle, and
towns and cities are too orderly and uneventful and cramped for us, and
we want something--something to whizz. T