Library / Literature & Fiction
Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars"
by H. G. Wells
- Pages
- about 18
- Category
- Literature & Fiction
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 19 min at 250 wpm
From the opening
In this game the floor is the sea. Half--rather the larger half because
of some instinctive right of primogeniture--is assigned to the elder of
my two sons (he is, as it were, its Olympian), and the other half goes
to his brother. We distribute our boards about the sea in an
archipelagic manner. We then dress our islands, objecting strongly to
too close a scrutiny of our proceedings until we have done. Here, in
the illustration, is such an archipelago ready for its explorers, or
rather on the verge of exploration. There are altogether four islands,
two to the reader's right and two to the left, and the nearer ones are
the more northerly; it is as many as we could get into the camera. The
northern island to the right is most advanced in civilization, and is
chiefly temple. That temple has a flat roof, diversified by domes made
of half Easter eggs and cardboard cones. These are surmounted by
decorative work of a flamboyant character in plasticine, designed by G.
P. W. An oriental population crowds the courtyard and pours out upon
the roadway. Note the grotesque plasticine monsters who guard the
portals, also by G. P. W., who had a free hand with the architecture of
this remarkable specimen of eastern religiosity. They are nothing, you
may be sure, to the gigantic idols inside, out of the reach of the
sacrilegious camera. To the right is a tropical thatched hut. The
thatched roof is really that nice ribbed paper that comes round
bottles--a priceless boon to these games. All that comes into the house
is saved for us. The owner of the hut lounges outside the door. He is a
dismounted cavalry-corps man, and he owns one cow. His fence, I may
note, belonged to a little wooden farm we bought in Switzerland. Its
human inhabitants are scattered; its beasts follow a precarious living
as wild guinea-pigs on the islands to the south.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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