tel isn't much; but the piano is better thanthat fearful old thing at the Sebago House. Sometimes I godownstairs and talk to the lady who keeps the books--a French lady,who is remarkably polite. She is very pretty, and always wears ablack dress, with the most beautiful fit; she speaks a littleEnglish; she tells me she had to learn it in order to converse withthe Americans who come in such numbers to this hotel. She has givenme a great deal of information about the position of woman in France,and much of it is very encouraging. But she has told me at the sametime some things that I should not like to write to you (I amhesitating even about putting them into my journal), especially if myletters are to be handed round in the family. I assure you theyappear to talk about things here that we never think of mentioning atBangor, or even of thinking about. She seems to think she can tellme everything, because I told her I was travelling for generalculture. Well, I DO want to know so much that it

hile life as a whole, history, character, and destiny are objects unfit for imagination to dwell on, and repellent to poetic art? I cannot think so. If it be a fact, as it often is, that we find little things pleasing and great things arid and formless, and if we are better poets in a line than in an epic, that is simply due to lack of faculty on our part, lack of imagination and memory, and above all to lack of discipline.

This might be shown, I think, by psychological analysis, if we cared to rely on something so abstract and so debatable. For in what does the short-winded poet himself excel the common unimaginative person who talks or who stares? Is it that he thinks even less? Rather, I suppose, in that he feels more; in that his moment of intuition, though fleeting, has a vision, a scope, a symbolic something about it that renders it deep and expressive. Intensity, even momentary intensity, if it can be expressed at all, comports fullness and suggestion compressed into that intense moment. Yes, ev

climate of more abundant moisture, the ivywould have mantled it from head to foot in a garment that might, bythis time, have been centuries old, though ever new. In the dryItalian air, however, Nature had only so far adopted this old pile ofstonework as to cover almost every hand's-breadth of it withclose-clinging lichens and yellow moss; and the immemorial growth ofthese kindly productions rendered the general hue of the tower softand venerable, and took away the aspect of nakedness which would havemade its age drearier than now.

Up and down the height of the tower were scattered three or fourwindows, the lower ones grated with iron bars, the upper ones vacantboth of window frames and glass. Besides these larger openings, therewere several loopholes and little square apertures, which might besupposed to light the staircase, that doubtless climbed the interiortowards the battlemented and machicolated summit. With thislast-mentioned warlike garniture upon its stern old head and brow, thet

r a moment Bill stood over him, nostrils flaring, his whole body tense and waiting. But Tom was too groggy to get up.

"Oh, Bill, how could you!" Christy cried out, dropping to her knees beside Tom.

Bill strode with measured step to the door. There he turned, and looking back with a sneer, said, "Sweet dreams, Dream Boy!"

* * * * *

In a luxurious office of Asteroid Mining Corporation on the twenty-third floor of a Manhattan skyscraper a furious official of the corporation faced an uncomfortable underling.

"I've heard of some pretty crude tricks in my time, Heilman, but breaking into the Staker Company's office like a common house thief takes the tin medal for low grade brains!" the official ranted, pounding his desk. "I suppose you thought that was an excellent way to advance yourself in the corporation, eh? Finesse, Heilman, finesse. That's what it takes in matters like this. Asteroid Mining, before it got the monopoly, stopped competition, but not by common housebreaking--"

bunch grass in the miles of red shaggy prairie that stretched before his cabin. He knew it in all the deceitful loveliness of its early summer, in all the bitter barrenness of its autumn. He had seen it smitten by all the plagues of Egypt. He had seen it parched by drought, and sogged by rain, beaten by hail, and swept by fire, and in the grasshopper years he had seen it eaten as bare and clean as bones that the vultures have left. After the great fires he had seen it stretch for miles and miles, black and smoking as the floor of hell.

He rose slowly and crossed the room, dragging his big feet heavily as though they were burdens to him. He looked out of the window into the hog corral and saw the pigs burying themselves in the straw before the shed. The leaden gray clouds were beginning to spill themselves, and the snow flakes were settling down over the white leprous patches of frozen earth where the hogs had gnawed even the sod away. He shuddered and began to walk, trampling heavily with his ungainly

o whathappened under their eyes, they drew from the fountain-head ofthe past. The events in the ancient history of Israel, which wasnot only studied, but lived over again daily, stimulated thedesire to criticize it. The religious reflections upon naturelaid down in the myths of the people, the fairy tales, which havethe sole object of pleasing, and the legends, which are thepeople's verdict upon history--all these were welded into oneproduct. The fancy of the Jewish people was engaged by the pastreflected in the Bible, and all its creations wear a Biblical huefor this reason. This explains the peculiar form of the Haggadah.

But what is spontaneously brought forth by the people is oftenpreserved only in the form impressed upon it by the feeling andthe thought of the poet, or by the speculations of the learned.Also Jewish legends have rarely been transmitted in theiroriginal shape. They have been perpetuated in the form ofMidrash, that is, Scriptural exegesis. The teachers of theHaggadah, cal

aracter; but he goes further, when he asserts that'Bunyan's heart never was hardened.'[22] This is directly opposedto his description of himself:--'I found within me a great desireto take my fill of sin, still studying what sin was yet to becommitted; and I made as much haste as I could to fill my bellywith its delicates, lest I should die before I had my desire.' Hethus solemnly adds, 'In these things, I protest before God, I lienot, neither do I feign this sort of speech; these were really,strongly, and with all my heart, my desires; the good Lord, whosemercy is unsearchable, forgive me my transgressions.' The wholeof his career, from childhood to manhood, was, 'According to thecourse of this world, according to the prince of the power of theair, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience'(Eph 2:2).

These reminiscences are alluded to in the prologue of the HolyWar:--

'When Mansoul trampled upon things Divine,And wallowed in filth as doth a swine,Then I was

cannot be stationary; it must either decline or grow. Despite all the unworthy fears of our poor hearts, Divine love is destined to conquer. The bride exclaims:--

Thine ointments have a goodly fragrance; Thy name is as ointment poured forth; Therefore do the virgins love Thee.

There was no such ointment as that with which the High Priest was anointed: our Bridegroom is a Priest as well as a King. The trembling bride cannot wholly dismiss her fears; but the unrest and the longing become unbearable, and she determines to surrender all, and come what may to follow fully. She will yield her very self to Him, heart and hand, influence and possessions. Nothing can be so insupportable as His absence! If He lead to another Moriah, or even to a Calvary, she will follow Him.

Draw me: we will run after Thee!

But ah! what follows? A wondrously glad surprise. No Moriah, no Calvary; on the contrary, a KING! When the heart submits, then JESUS reigns. And when JESUS reigns, there is rest

hink of Prometheus chained to the rock. His flesh that came from the earth was the prey of the vulture, but the seed of the gods which was hidden in every mortal, gave him strength to resist what he believed to be wrong and bear suffering.

A strange old story, is it not? But it is also a story of to-day. Ours is the same earth with its fertile fields and wide forests, its rich mines and its wealth of flocks and herds. They are all given to us, just as the gods gave them to the first men, for the development of peace and plenty. And man, himself, is still a mixture of earth stuff and something else, too, that Prometheus called heavenly seed and we call soul. When selfishness and greed guide our uses of land and food and the metals there is apt to be pretty nearly as bad a time on the earth as when Jupiter and Neptune flooded it. But there is always a chance to be a Prometheus who can forget about everything except the right, and so help in bringing again the Golden Age of the gods to the world.