Of course the setting-out of the city is half the game. Then you devise
incidents. As I wanted to photograph the particular set-out for the
purpose of illustrating this account, I took a larger share in the
arrangement than I usually do. It was necessary to get everything into
the picture, to ensure a light background that would throw up some of
the trees, prevent too much overlapping, and things like that. When the
photographing was over, matters became more normal. I left the
schoolroom, and when I returned I found that the group of riflemen which
had been converging on the publichouse had been sharply recalled to
duty, and were trotting in a disciplined, cheerless way towards the
railway station. The elephant had escaped from the zoo into the Blue
Ward, and was being marched along by a military patrol. The originally
scattered boy scouts were being paraded. G. P. W. had demolished 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