pies the whole of the stage. But these are matters where one requires not expert technical stage knowledge, but ordinary common sense. When I wrote a play about farming people, I thought of a farm, and I tried to visualize the whole countryside in which that farm was situated, so that I knew not merely the names and characters of the people who came into the play, but also the names and something of the characters of the people who were their neighbors, but did not come into the play. I knew the name of the nearest market town and the number of miles between it and the farm. I knew how many churches were in the district and what doctrines were preached in each of them, and I was able to tell the actors in America who took part in the play just what crops were growing in the fields outside the farmhouse. A dramatist should know his people so well that he can tell you all about their lives before the play began and tell you what is going to happen to them after the play ends. When he makes a character do or say a thing, he should ask himself whether it is in consonance with the nature he has given to that character. He should also ask himself whether it is essential to the play. The test of value in a play is this: if a scene is taken out of it, is there a gaping wound? Will the wound leave a perceptible scar? If the scene can be removed without a wound or a scar, then it has no business to be in the play at all; it is mere padding, mere fat. Half the epigrams in Oscar Wilde's comedies are of the nature of things stuck on to a structure; they are not part of the structure they have not grown out of it and when they are removed one is unaware of the fact that they are not there. A play should be a living organism, so alive that when any part of it is cut off the body bleeds!

The aspiring dramatist should bear

in mind my definition of a bad dramatist as a man who goes into the theatre and never comes out of it again. A good dramatist is a man who constantly checks the creatures of his imagination with the creatures he discovers about him. He should begin his career by doing three things: (a) reading such a book as Play-Making for its valuable negative advice; (b) studying the plays of great dramatists to see how they did their work; and (c) formulating a view of life and checking it with the life of his contemporaries. (The danger of the third item is that he may formulate his view of life and then try to make the rest of humanity square with it.) This brings me to the reapoint of this article, which is to coml mend to aspiring dramatists and to all who are interested in the growth of good drama, an excellent body called the Phoenix Society. This society has set itself the job of producing good, but infrequently performed, Elizabethan and Restoration plays. I am interested in it for a variety of reasons, but especially for the reason that the production of these plays does give the young dramatist a chance of developing his own craft by comparing it with that of masters of another time. We draw our inspiration from many sources, and if some of those sources are closed to us, then the quality of our inspiration is likely to be diminished.

Take the five plays which the Phonix Society has announced for performance: Venice Preserved, by Thomas Otway; Volpone, by Ben Jonson; The Witch of Edmonton, by Dekker, Ford, and William Rowley; All for Love, by John Dryden; and Bartholomew Fair, by Ben Jonson. It seems to me indisputable that the public performance of these five plays must be of great value in the training and inspiring of young dramatists, apart altogether from their merits as works of literature and as

entertainments. Young dramatists, therefore, should be the most enthusiastic supporters of the Phoenix Society, which should be to them as a college in a university. Merely reading the plays is not enough. No play is completely a play until it has been performed. The ordinary commercial theatre is not likely to produce them, partly for financial reasons and partly because the ordinary commercial manager has probably never heard of Ben Jonson or John Dryden. (Jack Johnson, yes, but Ben Jonson, no!) A rich man who endows a college is acclaimed as a benefactor of learning. Is it not time we realized that the endowment of such a society as this is also a benefaction of learning? We cannot all endow societies, but at least we can, many of us, become members of them. I suggest to those of my readers who wish to see English drama living on a high level that they should become members of the Phoenix Society. The name of the Secretary is Miss Alice Fredman, and her address is 36 Southampton Street, Strand, W.C.2.

[The Manchester Guardian]

A WEST INDIAN WEDDING

BY J. W. D.

A PLAYFUL breeze fluttered the curtains and bore in through the window the fragrance of coffee blossoms and the myriad sweetnesses of a tropic morning. The sun slanted a golden beam across my pillow, and I remembered that it was the wedding morning of Estelle. Estelle, servant 'gal' at the Great House, was this day to be led to the altar by Zebediah Brown of the village of Content. Zebediah had come one June afternoon with his cutlass to 'chop' a too adventurous patch of wild ginger, just when Estelle, we were afraid, was lending an attentive ear to

the whisperings of one Dixon, who, rumor had it, was too lavish with money to have acquired the same by honest means. honest means. Besides, he had a lightof-love in Dallas, which lay in the valley below Content. But when Zebediah had cleared the wild ginger he went into the kitchen, where Estelle was busy over the frying pan. The sight must have thrilled his honest heart, for he came again, the first time with a sugar cane, the next with a bright bandanna handkerchief, and lastly with a string of red corals. During these visits he chopped wood and fetched water from the spring - and after the gift of the red corals Estelle came and told us that she was going to be married. Up here in the hills marriages were but infrequent occurrences, and we were glad that Estelle was following in the footsteps of her mother, who, twenty years before, had married and in the fullness of time borne to her husband eleven children. Zebediah, a man of action, had rolled his trousers an inch or two higher above his calves and had sharpened his cutlass. In the village of Content a new hut was wattled and thatched and furnished.

All things were ready now, and today, folk from far and near were coming to see Estelle made one with Zebediah. The sun sent another shaft to find his first, and then a quiverful of golden arrows fell into my room. Moved to action by his insistence, I went across to the window and looked out. All around lay the wonder and wistfulness of a new Jamaican day. The wind that had fluttered the curtains fondly caressed the bamboo fronds and whispered to the wild ginger wet with dew. A humming bird droned by and dipped his beak into a scarlet hibiscus flower. Across in the fields beyond, mango and wild fig and coffee, white with blossom and scarlet with fruit, were scattered in wild profusion over the lavish earth.

A mist hung over the distant mountains. It was the beginning of a perfect day, in a country which knows few failures so far as the beauty of days goes.

About ten o'clock we walked down to the Dallas road and sat on the bank waiting for the bridal procession to pass along on its way to the church, some five miles down the valley. The sun was strong now, and we nestled deep into the bracken under the shade of cedars overgrown with 'old man's beard.' A hush hung over the world, and even the wild beauty of these mountains seemed subdued in the calm of this Sabbath day. The silence was soon broken by the quick beating of hooves in the far distance. At times the sound died away as the path swept round a curve in the hill, and it was some time before the first rider came clattering along the rough and stony road. It was old Notiss, the carpenter, resplendent as we had never seen him before. Then there was a glimmer of white, and we got our cameras ready. No society bride ever ran the gauntlet of photographers more gracefully than Estelle did, though I doubt not that had her skin been white instead of a chocolate brown she would have blushed. Along with her rode her mother and father. After them came a medley of colored men and women. Strangely enough, with the exception of Estelle's mother and Estelle herself, who were mounted on steeds lent for the occasion, what riders there were were men. The women followed on foot, their heads tied with bright bandanna handkerchiefs. Most of the men and youths, although they wore, as far as the eye could see, most of the garments that convention and climate. demanded, were barefooted. They were not used to walking in boots, and they had a longish way to go. But most of them had boots. These were carried in the hand, and would in due course

be put on at the church door after a great deal of polishing and pain. What discomfort there was attached to this business no doubt had its compensations in being able to walk up the aisle to an accompaniment of squeaks. The bigger the squeak the better the boot is the law here, and shoemakers are particular to see that when they construct these 'Banana Kings,' as the footwear most popular with these mountain men is called, the squeak is permanent. After the ceremony the boots would be removed, to the tremendous relief of the wearers.

The bridegroom went by another way, and it was not until late that afternoon that we saw him at the marriage feast, which was held at the village of Content, a long, straggling little collection of wattle huts set in scenery that seemed to pluck at one's heart. The sounds of revelry guided us to the bower of bamboo and banana leaves which had been erected for the occasion. Within this, round a table covered with a dazzling white cloth, sat about thirty colored folk of all ages and sizes from the twins upward. Many more were standing round, waiting their chance for a seat. At the head, entrenched behind a massive cake, sat Zebediah and his bride. Poor Zebediah we could see at a glance was unmanned. He sat staring sheepishly at the great slice of cake on the tablecloth before him. Even Estelle, her hands folded in her lap, had lost that fine composure which so well became her when she rode by in the morning. They smiled at us in watery fashion, and places were made for us round the groaning board, which was covered with fruit and cake and loaves of bread shaped like birds and fishes and all manner of flesh and fowl. Great wine glasses filled with syrup were before each guest, though I am afraid that Zebediah's father had found other and stronger means of refreshing him

self. He seemed very anxious to kiss the girls and to sing and pull the string of a large 'jumping jack' which hung from a bamboo pole. This tickled the twins considerably. Dixon was there, and I sat next to him and was glad that it was Zebediah who sat at Estelle's side and not he. But Dixon was not of the marrying sort, and my thanksgivings were wasted. Our visit for a few moments threw a damper on the proceedings, but things soon got right again.

The syrup was removed and port wine substituted and a concertina brought out. But the music was quenched when somebody called out 'Speech!' Zebediah and Estelle looked at one another, and then Zebediah, as pale as his black skin would permit him, arose. "Too full,' he said and sat down again, leaving us in doubt as to whether emotion or the wedding cake had proved too much for him.

More speeches were made, and then the whole party adjourned to the Great House, where the big dining room, lent for the occasion, had been cleared for dancing. The concertina came to the fore again, and a flute, and the dancing began. Round they went, these black, perspiring folk, to the weird music produced by the union, though one can hardly call it that, of these two instruments. They waltzed, then they did the lancers and some other dances of their own composition. And the merrymaking and dancing went on until long after midnight, when one by one the revelers went to their huts scattered about the moonlit hills. Many miles lay between some of them and home, and I have no doubt that there was many a sinking heart as they went away. For who does not know that ghosts and other strange creatures lurk in the shadows of the whispering trees, and there are few more superstitious people in the world than the West

[The Saturday Review] GETTING RID OF BOOKS

WE have a vivid recollection of a sad tale told to us years ago by Sir Herbert Maxwell, author and politician, sportsman and naturalist, and, greater than these, lover of books. He wanted to make room in his library for a new purchase or was it perhaps to obtain a few pounds to assist in procuring the new purchase?- and he weeded out a set of sporting magazines. Years passed, and one day, much to his disgust, he read that a set of the rejected volumes had been sold for nearly a thousand pounds!

Obviously, the process of weeding requires care. There are three methods open to us, by gift, by sale, or by destruction. Sometimes the careless borrower gives a helping hand; but we should prefer not to be indebted to him. The gift method may be subdivided thus: Process A, deliberate and personal; process B, casual and impersonal. The object in each case is the same: to find a suitable home for the book. It is surprising what pleasure the humble possessor of a few volumes may give to the proud owner of a fine library by the gift of a volume which happens to fit into the big man's collection, or to help him along with his hobby.

A book that throws some sidelight on a campaign is a treasure to an owner of a military library, and a trashy novel which has perpetrated some absurdity about birds may be a welcome gift to an ornithologist, and many a

book or annual of little worth may be redeemed by having an engraving or a woodcut that gives it a charm for a collector. If a book has to go, never be afraid of asking friend Brown, owner of priceless treasures though he be, if he would like to have it.

Process B, now that Camps' Library is no more, makes an excellent game. Let's have a turn at it. The problem is, to find a home for two volumes during a half-hour's stroll in London. You sally forth with, let us say, a sporting novel, and a mutilated and bethumbed copy of Lindsay Gordon under your arm, having first removed, if you are wise, every evidence of your ownership from each. Fate seems kind to you, for there, a few yards off, is a Carter Paterson van without an attendant. You are sorely tempted to dump down the 'lot' and vanish, but then you would not be playing the game. You have to find a home for each book. The sprite answering to the lure of the legend 'C. P. & Co.,' displayed in the basement window, will in time return from the nether regions, and as soon as his foot is on the step, off will go the horses; and for all you know, when he is round the corner, Jehu will chuck your gifts in the gutter.

You resist temptation, and move on to find yourself in Kensington Gardens. Behold an unguarded perambulator right in your path. A hasty look around assures you that there is no nurse to be seen, nor any sign of a nurse, not even a soldier. Obviously, baby wants the sporting novel, and won't be happy till he gets it. You scrawl on the title page, 'A Present for a Good Girl,' and deposit it by the sleeping infant. You hope it is a girl, as then the nurse won't be worried by the inscription. Otherwise that 'good' may cause some searchings of the heart to the absentee. Ironia patet, but not

necessarily to nursemaids. You will remove yourself and await results: on your return from a hurried visit to the Round Pond you meet a perambulator. Joy! It is the perambulator, and with it a nurse, and with her a soldier, and under his other arm a sporting novel! 'Won by a neck!' was not written in vain.

There remains the Lindsay Gordon. As the moment of parting comes, you feel inclined to keep it after all. You are now near the Albert Hall, and a procession of sandwich men, going west, comes in view. The sight recalls those verses-sacred' Thackeray called them which immortalized Robert Levett, 'the obscure practicer in physic among the lower people,' who, but for the tactful help of his friend, the poet, that mountain of humanity, might well have had to join in such a procession as this. It, too, walks its narrow round, nor makes a pause, its pride disdains no petty gains, and the toil of every day supplies the modest wants of every day. Here is your chance. Would not Gordon find a welcome home here? Is he not

Of every friendless name the friend?

Side by side you walk to pick your man. Then tentatively, softly, insinuatingly to an object that looks as if he might retain within his rags a glimmer of the sacred light, you appeal, 'Like a book to read?' A puff of vile tobacco is all the answer. Nothing daunted, you try again and make progress. This time you get a growl. 'Not allowed to read on duty.' 'Then take it for off duty.' A hand not without traces of refinement is held out, and it grasps the book. In quick succession a hurried glance at the name, a look of obvious relief-saying plainly 'Not a tract this time!'— and a voice with a quaver in it breathes, 'Ah! Lindsay Gordon!' Here's a