and so return to the railway station, extremely gratified by all we have
seen, and almost equally divided in our minds between the merits and
attractiveness of either ward. A clockwork train comes clattering into
the station, we take our places, somebody hoots or whistles for the
engine (which can't), the signal is knocked over in the excitement of
the moment, the train starts, and we "wave a long, regretful farewell to
the salubrious cheerfulness of Chamois City."

You see now how we set out and the spirit in which we set out our towns.
It demands but the slightest exercise of the imagination to devise a
hundred additions and variations of the scheme. You can make picture-
galleries--great fun for small boys who can draw; you can make
factories; you can plan out flower-gardens--which appeals very strongly
to intelligent little girls; your town hall may become a fortified
castle; or you may put the whole town on boards and make a Venice of it,
with ships and boats upon its canals, and bridges across them. We used
to have some very serviceable ships of cardboard, with flat bottoms; and
then we used to have a harbor, and the ships used to sail away to
distant rooms, and even into the garden, and return with the most
remarkable cargoes, loads of nasturtium-stem logs, for example. We had
sacks then, made of glove-fingers, and several toy cranes. I suppose we
could find most of these again if we hunted for them. Once, with this
game fresh in our we went to see the docks, which struck us as just our
old harbor game magnified.

"I say, Daddy," said one of us in a quiet corner, wistfully, as one who
speaks knowingly against the probabilities of the case, and yet with a
faint, thin hope, "couldn't we play just for a little with these sacks .
. . until some-body comes?"