during excavations, he was resuscitated and restored to his rank in the army. His cenotaph remains-a hollow mockery.

The reader may recall "The Dumb Soldier" of Stevenson, who had the enviable experience of lying buried for a season.

Under grass alone he lies,

Looking up with leaden eyes,
Scarlet coat and pointed gun
To the stars and to the sun.

I shall find him, never fear,
I shall find my grenadier;
But for all that's gone and come,

I shall find my soldier dumb.

When a man falls into the water a crane is hurried to the spot. If he can be fished out at the first angling he may live, but if not, he is presumed dead, and becomes for the time being a thing of naught.

The "Undiscovered Country" is known to be inhabited by various tribes, whose history would make an interesting study for an ethnologist. For it is said by those who live at "The Last Post" that one of these warring factions is led by one Hullabaloo the Zulu, and another by a certain Hitchy Koo or Bread upon the Waters, a Red Indian Chief. Another attractive personality, who made his first and only appearance at a War Council of the Powers, was Tin Can, the Chinese ambassador.

We have made so little of wars that the subject need not be treated here. The reader is referred to Mr. H. G. Wells's "Little Wars," upon whose rules of campaigning we based our own. Of the many interesting civil events which occurred during our four Playtown seasons I have space to record fully but one.

Sir George Thorpe, a landowner of local importance, was asked by Mr. Flaggy, the station-master of St. Nicholl's, to plant a tree, in commemoration of some event not stated. The occasion was an important one, and the whole countryside made ready to attend the ceremony. But a difficulty arose from the fact that each household seemed to have a double in every other household. The station staff at St. David's could not be distinguished from those at Castle Hill Station. And Mr. Orkney so closely resembled C. Tain, the builder's merchant,

that Mrs. Orkney refused to let her husband travel in the same train, for fear of " mixing him up."

Matters came to a head when Sir George Thorpe declared, with some heat, that unless that journalist fellow, Mr. Noseabout, ceased to duplicate him in every particular he would plant no trees-no, not though the military paraded six regiments, and all the military bands in the country played "He's a jolly good fellow." Things were looking very gloomy, and it seemed as though the public holiday would have to be abandoned, when suddenly one of the trolley porters of St. David's fell into a pot of white enamel, and was fished out a milkman! The solution of the difficulty was hailed with delight, and every one hurried home to change his clothes. Sir George left the journalist fellow to wear navy blue and himself appeared in a rich brown -of which trouble was to arise. Train after train now arrived at St. Nicholl's bringing families hardly yet dry in their new clothes, and with them their domestic pets. Army and Navy were both represented, and it was rumoured afterwards that even Hullabaloo the Zulu had painted little white buttons on his brown skin and come to the great tree-planting.

Speeches were made, the tree was duly planted, bands played, and the soldiers fired what some one in the crowd called a "Few de Joy." And then discord arose. Sir George having had the bad taste in his third speech to make some scathing remarks about journalists, Mr. Noseabout, the reporter, clad in neat blue serge, referred impudently to Sir George as "that chocolate eclair." The crowd began to shout and to take sides, and soon there would have been a tumult, had not the captain of the garrison, with admirable presence of mind, opened fire with his guns upon the populace.

Now it happened that in the assembly was a quiet little woman, Mrs. Bimbo by name, a lodging-house keeper. Finding that it was growing late, and not being particularly interested in the quelling of riots, Mrs. Bimbo decided to go home" and cook the chops for her young gentlemen's dinners." But when she arrived at the station there was no train and no staff.

It was all deserted around,

For they all had gone to the fair, sir,
And there was no one to be found.

It was a long walk home to the other side of Castle Hill by road, so Mrs. Bimbo decided to take a short cut through the idle tunnel. A few minutes later, the riot having been cut short by the death by misadventure of Mr. Noseabout, the return excursion train started from St. Nicholl's. And the young gentlemen had no chops for their dinner that night, for little Mrs. Bimbo had been decapitated in the tunnel.

There have been, of course, many tragedies and romances connected with the railway. One of the most remarkable was the case of old Mr. Peaky, the railway official, who spent a whole winter in the tunnel. On his being recovered in the early summer it occured to some one, apropos of nothing at all, that poor Mr. Peaky in his present state was 'the image of Ibsen." None of us understood why, but Mr. Peaky was honoured accordingly, and placed on a pedestal in the market-place.

While Playtown is in full activity every one has to be careful where he steps, and to walk only on the appointed "treads." For one is a Gulliver in this Lilliputian land. But towards the end of the season we relax care, and take less interest in the minute things. We even run up and down by the river in sailing our boats, as though it were a dyke and had no roads, fences, buildings, and wharves along its banks. Thus it happens that with the restoration of each returning spring, many relics are excavated which were trodden into the ground in the autumn. A boy digging the foundations of his new house, or making a cutting for a railway extension, will unearth old walls, pieces of machinery, bits of forgotten people, and all manner of treasure. These we carefully preserve in a Playtown Museum kept in the shed. The finds are labelled with the most romantic ascriptions: "Roof beams of a manor house of the last century unearthed on the site of the present Gareth Hostel." "Rim and a few spokes of an old cart-wheel found when digging the Well of the Lady Oliver.” * The query sometimes seen on museum labels is also quaintly mimicked: "?Skull of a Zulu warrior," "? Funnel of a primitive steam-engine." And so on. This may be poor fun for the adult reader, and offensive to an archæologist, * This name was not a corruption of Olivia, but had a separate origin.

but it is excellent play. For who that knows boys will deny that they love excavations, and can appreciate the excitement of a find as keenly as the most learned geologist? And surely it is better for them to dig up something which really is exciting than to fall back always upon unsupported make-believe. But I must not argue here, for an understanding of Playtown, more than of all these other schemes, depends upon one's having a player's instinct. And that is uncommunicable.

Our Playtown in shape is an irregular oblong, and in size some four yards by fourteen. There are four hills, the largest of which is about two feet in height. Those who wish to make a Playtown are recommended to go where soil is available, for in our yard more than a dozen loads of gravel, sand, and soil have been required to form the land. Cement is necessary if you propose to have any water. We used about a sack and a half of cement each season, for the banks of the river need occasional repair, and new cement is always being laid for wharves and station platforms and to support the sides of cuttings on roads and railway. Cement-work can be painted, but the colour fades rapidly until several coats have been applied. Battlements can be cast or carved in cement, but the operation is difficult. The round towers of our castle were made by filling coffee-tins with soft cement and ripping the tin away when the cement had hardened. For the water, a large lake would probably be more convenient than a river. The river current makes navigation difficult for tiny clockwork boats. Also a flowing river, if not given constant attention, will overflow. We had many floods. If possible your whole Playtown should be raised three feet or so from the ground. It would thus be easy to handle things without sitting on the ground or stooping, and, more important still, the countryside would not be constantly trodden upon. We were always having to repair damage done by our careless feet. One way of getting the Playtown three feet above ground level would be to build a wall all round the proposed coast-line and then fill the space enclosed. But a simpler plan would be to make your Playtown on ground level, and then dig trenches round it to walk in.