that I used as Nero used his Christians to ornament my public

buildings; and I finally melted some into fratricidal bullets, and

therewith blew therest to flat splashes of lead by means of a brass

cannon in the garden.

I find this empire of the floor much more vivid and detailed in my

memory now than many of the owners of the skirts and legs and boots

that went gingerly across its territories. Occasionally, alas! they

stooped to scrub, abolishing in one universal destruction the slow

growth of whole days of civilised development. I stillremember the

hatred and disgust of these catastrophes. Like Noah I was given

warnings. Did I disregard them, coarse red hands would descend,

plucking garrisons from fortresses and sailors from ships, jumbling

them up in their wrong boxes, clumsily so that their rifles and

swords were broken, sweeping the splendid curves of the Imperial

Road into heaps of ruins, casting the junglegrowth of Zululand into

the fire.

Well, Master Dick," the voice of this cosmic calamity would say,

"you ought to have put them away last night. No! I can't wait until

you've sailed them all away in ships. I got my work to do, and do

it I will."

And in no time all my continents and lands were swirling water and

swiping strokes of house-flannel.

That was the worst of my giant visitants, but my mother too, dear

lady, was something of a terror to this microcosm. She wore spring-

sided boots, a kind of boot now vanished, I believe, from the world,

with dull bodies and shiny toes, and a silk dress with flounces that

were very destructive to the more hazardous viaducts of the Imperial

Road. She was always, I seem toremember, fetching me; fetching me

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