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country if she drew her hand back from the plough.

When Dad asked her what she meant by the plough, Mother said she did not of course mean a real plough, but only that she had told Lady Montfort that she thought the idea of the lectures was charming, and that she would open her drawing-room with pleasure. "Lady Montfort says he is quite a Dear Man, and that we shall all be sure to like him," Mother said.

So the Dear Man came-and so did heaps and heaps of ladies, and they ate piles of afternoon tea. Cecil said that was to show sympathy with childhood, and to come down to the child's level. He said that after we had heard the *lectures.

The worst of Cecil is that he is frightfully honorable. It is awful trying to prove to him that the things we both want to do are all right. And of course we wanted to hear what the Dear Man had to say, especially as he isn't a bit rotten, and has the biggest nose and the twinkliest eyes; besides, we heard Mother telling Dad that the lectures were entirely unsuited for children.

That was what made us think of the conservatory, and the place behind the fernery, where there used to be a fountain, but the tap has gone wrong.

If you crouch down, the palms hide you, and you can hear any one talking in the drawing-room.

Cecil argued for an hour about it, but I never give in, and at last I thought of telling him that Dad often said that two were better than one, and that if we knew how we were to be trained, we could bend ourselves and help Mother so much better. In our house Mother does the training, and Dad makes remarks.

Then I enticed Cecil by telling him to take his note-book, and that Mother would be delighted afterwards to find that he had written it down, for

she had only been groaning just before about how she forgot every lecture she ever went to.

So we went, and it was all rather startling. I am going to underline what Cecil put down. He writes rather large, so he missed heaps, and I had to listen to the in-between bits.

"Sit at the feet of the child. Place the child in the midst!"

Fancy, and they wouldn't even have us in the room! I nudged Cecil and was just going to say something when he licked his pencil and told me not to interrupt him.

"Curiosity-a precious gift! Do not smother it. Do not let it worry you. The child is reaching out to know. The child cannot help itself."

There, again, of course we were right to listen. Cecil looked up at me with joy in his big eyes, and knew at last that I was really right.

"There are two kinds of childrenMotors and Sensors. Motor children are those who act first and think afterwards, and Sensors are those who think first and act afterwards-sometimes."

We thought that was rather clever of him. He had got Cecil and me as good as a snapshot.

I adore playing motor-cars bouncing down the rock path, but Cecil doesn't. He says a real motor would never go that way to the pond, but round by the drive.

"The Motor child is covered with cuts and lumps and bruises. The Sensor child seldom falls."

That was as right as Cecil's sums always are. I counted six things on me this morning in the bath-one a lovely green and purple mark as big as a pincushion. (Cecil says that's no comparison, because a pincushion might be any size of course I meant the one in my room.)

Certainly Cecil never gets a scratch. Dad says Cecil will be a judge, and that I shall be a circus girl.

"It is upon the Motor child that the everlasting 'Don't falls."

"Cecil," I said, "that man must be a wizard!" I poked my head through the palms, but I could only see some boots. "Do not crush the Motor child by 'don'ting' him. The world is full of 'don'ters'that is what is the matter with it. Rather feel that in your Motor child you have a mighty force."

I told this afterwards to Nurse while she was doing my hair-of course without telling her what had put the idea into my head-and all she said

was:

"Don't twist about so, Miss Helen!" Then I told Guest, the gardener, and he said, "Well, Miss, so long as you don't run over my flower beds, and don't jump over the new shrubs, and don't leave the hot-house doors open, and don't-"

I told him he was a "don'ter," and ran off.

"That precious gift, the imagination! Make-believe! Your children live in a beautiful world of their own! Do not seek to drag them downwards to our poor adult level!"

We wondered what an adult level was. Cecil thought it might be the level crossing down below the park that we were not to be dragged down to-as if we weren't always dying to run across the line.

Then we heard Mother's voice.

"But suppose you had a boy and girl who lived in such a 'beautiful world' of their own that they employed themselves one early morning in digging up earthworks on the lawn and insisting, against all argument, that the Boers were in the park, and that they were defending the house?"

Cecil and me looked at each other. They had put us to bed at five that day, and took away our pocket-money

Punch.

for a fortnight to pay for the gardener's time for putting the earthworks back.

"Surely the precious gift of imagination which your children possess, Mrs. Lister, is worth your beautiful lawn ten times over! And consider the evidence of loyalty to yourselves, the instinct of home defence-"

Wasn't he a Dear Man? I would like to have rushed to kiss him.

"But one can't have one's lawns digged up," went on Mother, in a mournful little voice she has sometimes. "We should lose the gardener in a week."

"Perhaps it might have been better to enter into the spirit of the occasion, and tell them that you had authentic word during the night that the Boers would approach by the back of the house.

"Then they would have digged up the vegetable garden," Mother said, "and the under-gardeners would have left in a body."

We did not hear the end of that, because the door opened and we knew that the tea was coming, and Mother had particularly mentioned that as it was holiday time we were to come in and make ourselves useful.

So we scrambled up, and round by the side door, and so properly into the drawing-room.

The minute we appeared they all stopped talking, and we knew why. "Please don't mind us," said Cecil, very politely.

"My dear boy, where have you been?" laughed Mother.

And when we looked down, Cecil's knees and my skirts were awful, with crouching in the fernery.

"There is a plot on foot to destroy every mother in the country!" said Cecil, in his slow, clear voice. "Helen and I have been searching in the cellars."

LE GRAND SALUT.

[Major Dreyfus, in the name of the Republic and the people of France, I proclaim you a knight of the Legion of Honor.]

The Athenæum.

There is a power in innocence, a might

Which, clothed in weakness, makes injustice vain:

A strength, o'ertopping reason to explain,

Which bears it-though deep-buried out of sight-
Slowly and surely upward to the light:

A conscious certainty amidst its pain

That, robbed of all things, it shall all regain,
Through that eternal law which guards the right.

O Dreyfus! Thy dear country has restored
More than thine honor in this hour supreme.
Noble, still noble, though she so could err,
God spared thee to her that she might redeem
Herself, and hand thee back thy blameless sword.
Listen! the world salutes-not only thee, but her!

Florence Earle Coates.

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

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following, which are among its recommendations: That the letter "y" shall be suppressed whenever it is pronounced as "i," as in "cristal"; that "s" shall take the place of "x" in such plurals as "chevaus"; that the superfluous "h" shall be dropped in such words as "rétorique" and "téâtre"; that the French for "egg" shall henceforth be "euf"; that "pan" shall be written instead of "paon," "prent" instead of "prend," "dizième" instead of "dixième," and "exposicion" instead of "exposition." It is noteworthy that the Académie française, which has in its time done good service to French spelling, is not to be consulted. The measure is to affect schools only; but in all schools the suggested changes are to be made compulsory by Ministerial decree.

In spite of an abrupt conclusion which leaves the dissatisfied reader craving a sequel, "The King's Revoke" is an uncommonly fresh and interesting story. The period is that of Bonapartist rule in Spain, and the plot turns on the efforts of Spanish royalists to rescue Ferdinand, Prince of the Asturias, from the Castle of Valencay where he is a prisoner of state waiting Napoleon's pleasure. The hero of the story is a gallant young Irishman and the heroine a charming Marquesa, whose hereditary diamonds, pledged for the service of her King, play a prominent part. The group of English détenus at Tours contributes some unusual figures, and smugglers, spies and agents of the secret service are among the minor actors. Ferdinand himself is skilfully drawn, and Talley

rand is effectively introduced at a critical moment. The writer, Mrs. Margaret I.. Woods, is to be congratulated on her choice of a subject and on the ingenuity with which she has handled it. E. P. Dutton & Co.

As the re-publications of May Sinclair's earlier novels are given one after another to American readers, the wonder grows that a writer of such talents and aims should have been so little known before the appearance of "The Divine Fire." "Audrey Craven," which Henry Holt & Co. have just issued in a style uniform with "Superseded," 'shows the same delicacy of perception and singleness of purpose which mark all her work. The study of a shallow and impressionable coquette, it offers abundant opportunity for that meretricious detail which too many of our popular novelists seem to use with deliberate intent to pander to unwholesome tastes. But in Miss Sinclair's work, such detail is so scrupulously limited by the psychological necessity that the whole effect is austere, and to the frivolous reader unattractive. The scene of the present story is laid in London, and in Audrey's successive lovers various modern types are cleverly satirized-the young spendthrift setting forth to retrieve his fortunes in the colonies, the artist with "only a rudimentary heart," the analytical novelist in quest of feminine material, and the high-church clergyman with his admiring train. Inferior, of course, to its successors, the book is yet far better worth reading than most of our current fiction.

SEVENTH SERIES
VOLUME XXXII.

No. 3243 Sept. 1, 1906.

CONTENTS.

FROM BEGINNING
Vol. CCXLX.

1. Memories of Church Restoration. By Thomas Hardy

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CORNHILL MAGAZINE 515 GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE

523

New Light on "Old Wedgwood."
Beaujeu. Chapter XXVIII. Mr. Dane is Humble. Chapter XXIX.
Love in a Cottage. By H. C. Bailey (To be continued.)
MONTHLY REVIEW 528

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V.

NINETEENTH CENTURY AND AFTER 533 A Guardian of the Stork. By Edward Vivian

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Ibsen's Craftsmanship. By William Archer

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CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL 541

First Principles of Faith: A Basis for Religious Teaching. By Sir
Oliver Lodge

The Tiger That Was Not. By George Maxwell .

HIBBERT JOURNAL 545

MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE 552

FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW 558
SPECTATOR 568
ECONOMIST 571
OUTLOOK 573

The End of the First Duma. By Bernard Pares
The Lords and the Education Bill.

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