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and a satisfaction. Then one regretted bitterly that one lost hour which could never be recovered.

The punishment of sitting on chairs was derived, it may be, from the ancient institution of the stocks; certainly it is related to it, in that one was thereby subjected to the jibes and sarcasm of the passer-by. If one had a brother engaged at the time on any engrossing or exciting pursuit it was natural that he should bring it into the room where one was thus detained and spread it forth and gloat over it; while through the open window came joyous shouts of freedom, hardly called for by the nature of the occasion. And there one sat with set teeth and clouded brow, going through with it to the best of one's poor ability, trying to concentrate one's ever-wandering thoughts upon some subject that would help the time to pass, trying above all not to look at the clock; but ever and anon one's eyes would be drawn back to it by a dreadful fascination. jaunty and casual air with which one had taken up one's position had barely outlasted the first five minutes; it had been followed by a state of wriggling impatience that grew ever in intensity. Of course a whole hour was a tremendous sentence-I fancy it was equivalent to about three months' hard labor in later life-and no bird escaping from the fowler's snare can have felt a greater relief and exultation than I when at last the minute hand would creep round again to its starting-place and I could kick the chair away and scamper forth.

The

To be sent to bed an hour before one's time carried with it a certain sting that added greatly to its mortification. It was not so much a question of it being before the usual time, as of it being before one's younger sister. That was an indignity, an encroachment upon one's just rights, an infringement of the hereditary system which rules

with an iron rod in every nursery. But quite apart from that it was terrible to have the day cut short. I like to think of that and to remember that there was a time when every separate day was a special gift and a vast opportunity, when it was a poignant loss to have it even thus curtailed. But on those occasions when I was the victim of this sad experience there came at last to me a certain fortunate philosophy which was infinitely comforting. For I reflected that the sooner I was safe in bed and sound asleep (and the two were almost simultaneous) the nearer I had come to To-morrow. In a way one might count the episode, if one reflected calmly, as a gain. For one was actually nearer by a whole hour than those others, still downstairs, to To-morrow. And splendid as To-day had been it was never comparable with To-morrow.

The dreadful experience of sitting on chairs reached its climax on a memorable Saturday when we had forgotten that one in Authority would return from the office early in the afternoon instead of after tea. I know not how it came about that the moated castle we had built was allowed to degenerate into a pool of liquid mud, or which of us it was that had conceived the idea of playing a new form of hunt-the-slipper in its horrid depths, but when the sport was at its height the gate at the bottom of the lawn opened and we remembered-that it was Saturday! We were caught, one might say with literal truth, redhanded. The sentences were very heavy, as was inevitable, and on the following afternoon, when they were carried out, every sitting-room in the house was requisitioned, and for a silent hour each held its wriggling victim on a chair. So fully was the available space occupied that one of us indeed was relegated to the summerhouse; and I, who was only "doing

half an hour," on the theory that I had been led astray, had at least the satisfaction of adjourning there, when my own time was up, and making faces at him through the window.

A sort of combination of these two forms of punishment was tried once, I remember, on a Sunday when we escaped from going to church by hiding in the rhubarb. It was not that we objected to church in any special degree; it was rather that we could not resist the rhubarb, which at that time had grown long and rank and splendidly dense. It was such a perfect hiding-place that we had only to find an adequate reason for hiding, and to escape from church did as well as any other. It was splendid to hear people calling one's name within a few yards of where one lay, when one could actually peer out and see their legs. And when all was still we crept forth and began to wonder and discuss "how long we would get." It was decreed that we go to bed in the afternoon! But that as a punitive experiment failed of its object. It was an innovation, and therefore interesting. It was almost an adventure. To be in bed in broad sunshine, when one was quite well! It was altogether too amusing a situation to depress.

But by far the most effective form of punishment to which we were subjected was the dread Apology. It is hard in later life-it is, I think, espeThe Saturday Review.

cially hard to newspaper editors and members of Parliament-to apologize. It is almost impossible, in my experience, to a small boy. Well do I remember a hideous day of dark rebellion when this awful task was put upon me. We had been throwing snowballs at a girls' school-naturally!and one at least of them had found its billet. I was adjudged the culprit, not because I was the eldest, nor yet because I had first thought of it, but because I alone had succeeded, where all had tried, in hitting the mark. And that rankled deeply. It was decreed that I call on the lady principal and apologize. For the rest of that day, and for much of the night that followed, I was torn and tortured by a strange and mordant shame. I shunned the rest of the company and brooded in seclusion. And then with a sort of wild unthinking dash I seized my cap and ran, never stopping for a moment till I had pulled the bell. In broken half-defiant tones I got it over. The lady, to my great surprise, made little of it, and talked of the pleasure of snow-balling, and asked me to stay to tea. I think she understood what I had been through. And I returned an hour later with a calm and equal mind. But the incident had scored itself deep upon my fickle memory. I never now throw snow-balls at girls' schools.

Bertram Smith.

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

Lovers and advocates of peace will take peculiar pleasure in the compact and pungent little book on "War and Its Alleged Benefits" by J. Novico, Vicepresident of the International Institute of Sociology, which Henry Holt & Co. publish in a translation by Thomas Seltzer. The author examines and

punctures all the arguments usually put forward in apology for war; and describes tersely and forcefully its various effects,-physiological, economic, political, intellectual and moral. All of which has been done often enough before, but rarely with such vigor or in so brief compass.

"The High Hand," by Jacques Futrelle, traces the career of a young mechanic who decides to enter the politics of his city and state, and, by means of his "Big Idea," foil completely the machine politicians, and become governor of his state and the purifier of the politics of his party. Although he ultimately achieves all this, the outcome is made sufficiently doubtful throughout the experiences of a long political campaign. The story is not

all politics: a thread of romance runs through it, and the young woman whom the hero helps out of an automobile complication in an early chapter becomes his in the closing pages. Bobbs-Merrill Co.

People who do not object to the element of broad farce in their fiction can hardly fail to take delight in Francis Perry Elliott's "The Haunted Pajamas." It is a story of a pair of Chinese pajamas, reputed to have been enchanted centuries ago by a necromancer, with the result that every wearer changed his semblance without changing his identity or becoming himself aware of the metamorphosis. Sent by a resident of China as a gift to a friend in New York, aptly called Lightnut, who is a vapid nonentity, they bring about, naturally, a great many absurd situations. The story is cleverly told, and may well divert an idle hour or two when the mercury is too high to encourage more serious reading. Bobbs-Merrill Co.

Travellers who are "doing" Italy this year cannot do better than to slip into their pockets Henry James Forman's "The Ideal Italian Tour" (Houghton Mifflin Company). The lightness, convenient size and flexible binding suggest this use of the book, and its comprehensiveness, admirable arrangement, and general up-to-dateness abundantly justify it. The book es

capes the extremes of ponderousness on the one hand and scrappiness on the other; it tells the traveller what he needs to know and in a manner at once to stimulate and to satisfy his curiosity; and through the medium of twenty or thirty illustrations it puts before him views of some of the most striking works of art, sculptures, palaces, churches and ruins which he will wish to visit.

Readers who enjoy tales of more or less brutal and reckless daring will like "Stanton Wins," by Eleanor Ingram. The story opens with an exciting automobile track race, in which the driver of the favorite car, suddenly losing his mechanician, takes on a new man, whose boyish face and figure belie his courage, and whose bravery and ready resourcefulness help to carry the car to a triumphant finish. He is retained as mechanician by the brusque driver, who is the hero of the tale, and together they go through many races and exciting experiences. The romantic side of the story is full of interest, although the denouement is easily guessed, and is reasonably convincing, in spite of obvious improbabilities. Bobbs-Merrill Co.

In the Autobiography of Shakespeare (Baker and Taylor Company), the author, Louis C. Alexander, has combined some of the few outstanding facts of Shakespeare's life, with his own ingenious theories concerning the poet's ancestry, tastes, moods, and mental development. He also gives an extensive list of the books that Shakespeare probably read and loved, and much detailed description of the methods of bringing out plays, staging, costuming, and the like, in vogue at that time. The representation of the state of mind and imaginative activity incident to the writing of some of the great plays arouses interest and speculation

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