no philosophy is worth its salt unless it can make a boy forget that he has the toothache; and the philosophy which i am about to introduce has triumphantly survived that exacting ordeal. that jack had the toothache everybody knew. the expression of his anguish resounded dismally through the neighbourhood; the evidence of it was visible in his swollen and distorted countenance. poor jack! all the standard cures—old-fashioned and new-fangled—had been tried in vain; all but one. it was that one that at last relieved the pain, and it is of that one that i now write. it happened that jack was within a week of his birthday. his parents, who are busy people, might easily have overlooked that interesting circumstance had not jack chanced to allude to it at every opportune and inopportune moment during the previous month or so. indeed, to guard against accidents, jack had enlivened the conversation at the breakfast-table morning by morning with really ingenious conjectures as to the presents by which his personal friends might conceivably accompany their congratulations. his 208expressions of disappointment in certain supposititious cases, and of unbounded delight in others, was quite affecting.
now jack’s father is afflicted by a wholesome dread of shopping. if a purchase must needs be made, jack’s mother has to make it. but jack’s mother labours under one severe disability. as jack himself often tells her—and certainly he ought to know—she doesn’t understand boys. the difficulty is therefore surmounted on this wise. jack’s mother visits the emporium; carefully avoids all those goods and chattels of which she has heard her son speak with such withering disdain; selects eight or ten of the articles that he has chanced to mention in tones of undisguised approval; orders these to be sent on approval at an hour at which jack will be sure to be at school; and leaves to her husband the responsibility of making the final decision. now this unwieldy parcel was still lying under the bed in the spare room on that fateful morning when jack became smitten with toothache. every other nostrum having failed, the mind of jack’s mother strangely turned to the toys beneath the bed. a woman’s mind is an odd piece of mechanism, and works in strange ways. no doctor under the sun would dream of prescribing a box of tin soldiers as a remedy for toothache; yet the mind of jack’s mother fastened upon that box of tin 209soldiers. it was just as cheap as some of the other remedies to which they had so desperately resorted; and it could not possibly be less efficacious. and there would still be plenty of toys to choose from for the birthday present. out came the box of soldiers, and off went jack in greatest glee. half an hour later his mother found him in the back garden. he had dug a trench two inches deep, piling up the earth in protective heaps in front of it. all along the trench stood the little tin soldiers heroically defying the armies of the universe. and the toothache was ancient history!
jack managed to get his little tin soldiers into a tiny two-inch trench; but, as a matter of serious fact, those diminutive warriors have occupied a really great place in the story of this little world. bagehot somewhere draws a pathetic picture of crowds of potential authors who, having the time, the desire, and the ability to write, are yet unable for the life of them to think of anything to write about. let one of these unfortunates bend his unconsecrated energies to the writing of a book on the influence of toys in the making of men. only the other day an antiquarian, digging away in the neighbourhood of the pyramids, came upon an old toy-chest. here were dolls, and soldiers, and wooden animals, and, indeed, all the playthings that make up the stock-in-trade of a modern nursery. 210it is pleasant to think of those small egyptians in the days of the pharaohs amusing themselves with the selfsame toys that beguiled our own childhood. it is pleasant to think of the place of the toy-chest in the history of the world from that remote time down to our own.
but i must not be deflected into a discussion of the whole tremendous subject of toys. i must stick to these little tin soldiers. and these small metallic warriors cut a really brave figure in our history. some of the happiest days in robert louis stevenson’s happy life were the days that he spent as a boy in his grandfather’s manse at colinton. ‘that was my golden age!’ he used to say. he never forgot the rickety old phaeton that drove into edinburgh to fetch him; the lovely scenery on either side of the winding country road; or the excited welcome that always awaited him when he drove up to the manse door. but most vividly of all he remembered the box of tin soldiers; the marshalling of huge armies on the great mahogany table; the play of strategy; the furious combat; and the final glorious victory. the old gentleman sat back in his spacious arm-chair, cracking his nuts and sipping his wine, whilst his imaginative little grandson in his velvet suit controlled the movements of armies and the fates of empires. the love of those little tin soldiers never forsook him. later on, at davos, 211an exile from home, fighting bravely against that terrible malady that had marked him as its prey, it was to the little tin soldiers that he turned for comfort. ‘the tin soldiers most took his fancy,’ says mr. lloyd osbourne, ‘and the war game was constantly improved and elaborated, until, from a few hours, a war took weeks to play, and the critical operations in the attic monopolized half our thoughts. on the floor a map was roughly drawn in chalks of different colours, with mountains, rivers, towns, bridges, and roads in two colours. the mimic battalions marched and countermarched, changed by measured evolutions from column formation into line, with cavalry screens in front and massed supports behind in the most approved military fashion of to-day. it was war in miniature, even to the making and destruction of bridges; the entrenching of camps; good and bad weather, with corresponding influence on the roads; siege and horse artillery, proportionately slow, as compared with the speed of unimpeded foot, and proportionately expensive in the upkeep; and an exacting commissariat added the last touch of verisimilitude.’ those little tin soldiers marched up and down the whole of robert louis stevenson’s life. they were with him in boyhood at colinton; they were with him in maturity at davos; and they were in at the death. for, in the familiar house at vailima, the house on the 212top of the hill, the house from which his gentle spirit passed away, there was one room dedicated to the little tin soldiers. the great coloured map monopolized the floor, and the tiny regiments marched or halted at their frail commander’s will.
one could multiply examples almost endlessly. we need not have followed robert louis stevenson half-way round the world. we might have visited ireland and seen mr. parnell’s box of toys. everybody knows the story of his victory over his sister. fanny commanded one division of tin soldiers on the nursery floor; charles led the opposing force. each general was possessed of a popgun, and swept the serried lines of the enemy with this terrible weapon. for several days the war continued without apparent advantage being gained by either side. but one day everything was changed. strange as it may seem, fanny’s soldiers fell by the score and by the hundred, while those commanded by her brother refused to waver even when palpably hit. this went on until fanny’s army was utterly annihilated. but charles confessed, an hour later, that, before opening fire that morning, he had taken the precaution to glue the feet of his soldiers to the nursery floor! did somebody discover in those war games at colinton, davos, and vailima a reflection, as in a mirror, of the adventurous spirit of robert louis stevenson? or, even more clearly, 213did somebody see, in that famous fight on the nursery floor at avondale, a forecast of the great irish leader’s passionate fondness for outwitting his antagonists and overwhelming his bewildered foe?
then let us glance at one other picture, and we shall see what we shall see! we are in russia now. it is at the close of the seventeenth century. yonder is a boy of whom the world will one day talk till its tongue is tired. they will call him peter the great. see, he gathers together all the boys of the neighbourhood and plays with them. plays—but at what? ‘he plays soldiers, of course,’ says waliszewski, ‘and, naturally, he was in command. behold him, then, at the head of a regiment! out of this childish play rose that mighty creation, the russian army. yes,’ our russian author goes on to exclaim, ‘yes, this double point of departure—the pseudo-naval games on the lake of pereislavl, and the pseudo-military games on the preobrajenskoie drill-ground—led to the double goal—the conquest of the baltic and the battle of poltava!’ yes, to these, and to how much else? when jack cures his toothache with a box of soldiers, who knows what world-shaking evolutions are afoot?
and now the time has come to make a serious investigation. why is jack—taking jack now as the federal head and natural representative of robert louis stevenson, charles stewart parnell, 214peter the great, and all the boys who ever were, are, or will be—why is jack so inordinately fond of a box of soldiers? by what magic have those tiny tin campaigners the power to exorcise the agonies of toothache? now look; the answer is simple, and it is twofold. the small metallic warriors appeal to the innate love of conquest and to the innate love of command. and in that innate love of conquest is summed up all jack’s future relationship to his foes. and in that innate love of command is summed up all his future relationship to his friends. for long, long ago, in the babyhood of the world, god spoke to man for the first time. and in that very first sentence, god said, ‘subdue the earth and have dominion!’ ‘subdue!’—that is conquest; ‘have dominion!’—that is command. and since the first man heard those martial words, ‘subdue and have dominion!’ the passions of the conqueror and the commander have tingled in the blood of the race. they have been awakened in jack by the box of soldiers. he feels that he is born to fight, born to struggle, born to overcome, born to triumph, born to command. and that fighting instinct will never really desert him. it will follow him, as it followed stevenson, from infancy to death. he may put it to evil uses. he may fight the wrong people, or fight the wrong things. but that only shows how vital a business is his training. a naval 215officer has to spend half his time familiarizing himself with the appearance of all our british battleships, in all lights and at all angles, so that he may never be misled, amidst the confusion of battle, into opening fire upon his comrades. as jack looks up to us from his little two-inch trenches, his innocent eyes seem to appeal eloquently for similar tuition.
‘teach me what those forces are that i have to conquer,’ he seems to say, ‘then teach me what forces i have to command, and i will spend all my days in the holy war.’
and, depend upon it, if we can show jack how to bend to his will all the mysterious forces at his disposal, and to recognize at a glance all the alien forces that are ranged against him, we shall see him one day among the conquerors who, with songs of victory on their lips and with palms in their hands, share the rapture of the world’s last triumph.
