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MAGIC CITIES
By E. NESBIT
I
DO not want you to think that I am boasting about my magic city. But I want you to believe that it was very beautiful, and that you can build one just as beautiful or much more beautiful if you care to try it. It is such an easy game. Everyone can play it. And everyone likes it—even quite old people.
The best place to build is on a table—or tables. Tables of different shapes, heights, and sizes make beautiful sites for cities. And bureaus are good, if you may take the drawers out and empty the pigeon-holes. I remember a wonderful city we made once: it was called the "City of a Thousand Lights," and it was built on a bureau, two large tables and three other smaller ones, all connected by bridges in the handsomest way. The bureau was the Temple of Mung, and we sacrificed a pale pink animal from the Noah's Ark at the shrine of this, the most mysterious of the gods of Pegana. The thousand lights—there were not a thousand, really, but there were many luminous towers, with windows of a still brighter glow— were made by putting a night-light in a tumbler—a little water first by way of fire insurance—and surrounding the tumbler by a sheet of paper with windows and battlements and fixed to a cylindrical shape by pins. The paper cylinders are of course fitted on outside the tumblers so that there is no danger of fire. All the same it is better to let a grown-up do the luminous towers.
Having chosen your site and blocked out the mass of your buildings, you begin to collect the building material.
Building Materials
When you have seen the silhouette of your city and begin to look for stuff to build with, you will instantly find that
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