He fired that day a shot that still echoes round the world.  An affair—­ let us parallel the Cannonade of Valmy and call it the Cannonade of Sandgate—­occurred, a shooting between opposed ranks of soldiers, a shooting not very different in spirit—­but how different in results!—­ from the prehistoric warfare of catapult and garter.  “But suppose,” said his antagonists; “suppose somehow one could move the men!” and therewith opened a new world of belligerence.

The matter went no further with Mr J. K. J. The seed lay for a time gathering strength, and then began to germinate with another friend, Mr W. To Mr W. was broached the idea:  “I believe that if one set up a few obstacles on the floor, volumes of the British Encyclopedia and so forth, to make a Country, and moved these soldiers and guns about, one could have rather a good game, a kind of kriegspiel.”. . .

Primitive attempts to realise the dream were interrupted by a great rustle and chattering of lady visitors.  They regarded the objects upon the floor with the empty disdain of their sex for all imaginative things.

But the writer had in those days a very dear friend, a man too ill for long excursions or vigorous sports (he has been dead now these six years), of a very sweet companionable disposition, a hearty jester and full of the spirit of play.  To him the idea was broached more fruitfully.  We got two forces of toy soldiers, set out a lumpish Encyclopaedic land upon the carpet, and began to play.  We arranged to move in alternate moves:  first one moved all his force and then the other; an infantry-man could move one foot at each move, a cavalry-man two, a gun two, and it might fire six shots; and if a man was moved up to touch another man, then we tossed up and decided which man was dead.  So we made a game, which was not a good game, but which was very amusing once or twice.  The men were packed under the lee of fat volumes, while the guns, animated by a spirit of their own, banged away at any exposed head, or prowled about in search of a shot.  Occasionally men came into contact, with remarkable results.  Rash is the man who trusts his life to the spin of a coin.  One impossible paladin slew in succession nine men and turned defeat to victory, to the extreme exasperation of the strategist who had led those victims to their doom.  This inordinate factor of chance eliminated play; the individual freedom of guns turned battles into scandals of crouching concealment; there was too much cover afforded by the books and vast intervals of waiting while the players took aim.  And yet there was something about it. . . .  It was a game crying aloud for improvement.