'Nothing, Robert. It was only an idea that occurred-it amused me; but it would n't interest you.'

'Nothing' though it was, her aspect had quickened in him the urge to laughter, a result of this hour of renewed deep sympathy, which was, indeed, proving strangely pleasant to both of them.

'But I think it would interest me,' he protested. 'Anyhow, I'll give a penny for the thought.'

She shook her head with an alluring obstinacy, which showed that the spirits were still alert.

'It's not for sale, Robert not even for twopence.'

'Oh, I must n't waste twopence in these days,' he said. 'Besides you're sure to tell me presently for nothing.' She laughed quietly, and again her mirth intrigued him.

'What a curmudgeon!' she said. 'And once you wasted—I remember -many twopences on brandy-balls and bulls'-eyes, horrid things.'

'O for the digestion of yester-year!' he sighed. 'Youth has all the luck!' She roused herself, closed the book on her lap, and placed it on the seat beside her.

"That sort of remark, Robert, is the beginning of old age; and you don't look it! There is plenty of youth for us yet, if we keep our hearts joyous. White hair counts for nothing, nowadays.'

'Shame not they! The lucky children have none of that modesty. They'd fall out of their cars from laughter at the backwardness of their forebears. .. Youth can be very cruel.'

'And very fine,' he added thoughtfully. An expression of dream came into his eyes. 'I-I had no good word for the "nut" before the war. His hair and his attitudes. I called, and thought, him girlish. But when I in hundreds saw him going over the top, always after carefully shaving-charging through the spatter of machine-gun fire-I- well, he proved built of the stuff of heroes.'

Her eyes were dim because of his words, but when he turned his head to look at her she smiled look at her she smiled- an April face, which recalled further memories. He laughed, so that some of the grasses in the garden awoke to listen.

'We buried in this orchard an old bottle,' he said.

'So you remember that! I've never forgotten.'

an over-plump profiteer. Oh, the beast!'

'Robert, what a power of hate you've got.'

'Yes, Meg. I've always hated him. He was my bête noir. He often pummeled me, was two heads taller than me. I could never get back at him on even terms. And he jeered at me, knowing it.'

'I think I have n't quite forgotten,' she said, after reflection. Her eyes held a new light, colored with mischief. 'Ah!'

"That boy was my first love. How I adored him! His strength, his ready wit, his shining hair.'

Come now, Meg!'

She turned her face to look at him with a side-glance of amusement.

'I remember he rode on the box of the fly with the driver when Aunt Pooley was taking me to the station for a week's visit to London, when I went to the Waxworks, then in Soho, with the Chamber of Horrors I can still smell that ugly smell - ugh! But then the Christy Minstrels and "Les Cloches de Corneville" put it all right. ... But perhaps he was not worthy of my young love,' she added reflectively. 'He was not! I wish we could find that bottle.'

'Yes, the bottle. It was at the foot of the tree.'

'Was that the twopenny thought, Meg?'

'Perhaps it was, Robert.'

'Egad! I'll find it then! Over forty years ago! What an adventure!' He sprang up with a glad energy and looked up, looked down was baffled.

'Better leave it alone. Let the dead past bury its-bottle.'

'No! By Jove, no! Certainly not!' "Then try that old tree.'

She pointed to an apple-tree, rusty, gnarled, aged, yet still showing its better-than-promise of ruddy fruit.

VOL. 21-NO. 1048

He walked briskly to the tree. There could be no doubt of his unfaded youthfulness, in spite of the gray of his hair.

'There is a spade in the hutch over there.' She indicated what looked like a green thicket.

'I remember! That's where Murphy kept the rabbits.'

The years melted to the dimensions of a tear-drop, as, striding among the trees, he found the shed, in the last condition of rusting decrepitude, which brought the memories leaping back. Gracious shadows wandered about him. It was a garden rich with genial ghosts.

He took back spade, fork, and pitchfork.

'Now exactly where?' He looked to her for guidance.

She rose and went toward him. He noted her grace, and the youthfulness that denied the undoubtable grandmaternity.

'Try here!' She pointed at a dandelion with her foot; and he went to work.

'Carefully!' she charged him.

'Are n't I as careful as I can possibly be?' he answered, with the swift spirit of protest that reminded her vividly of his intolerant boyhood.

Excitement grew on both of them, an excitement elaborately hidden, as with careful hands he delved.

They nearly missed the bottle even then. It was smaller than memory promised, and so solidly embedded in the earth that after the sleep of forty years the wilderness time! - it reappeared solidly enclosed in soil. He threw the spadeful on the growing upturned heap, and the bottle rolled into view.

History was resumed. The dream was ended. Neither said a word, though their hearts were throbbing strangely for elderly folk.

It was a squat, clumsy, glass bottle. Robert allowed no sentiment to delay the climax. Walking to a distance of safety, he hurled the bottle on a flint and broke its neck.

'No!' she had cried, protesting against this act iconoclastic. It seemed she would have remained content with the bottle still buried and guarding its hoard; but he had not been a gunner for nothing.

He came to her eagerly with the splintered torso; his hands trembled with exactly the same tense excitement as when he had brought her the robin's nest he had found among the laurels which still were there!

He rattled the bottle, and released a farthing dated 1872. They had both forgotten that! There followed the solitary joint of a doll's plaster leg; which she did remember. A blob of crumpled paper rammed in proved a mere fragment of newspaper- signifying nothing; and then-thensomething else, forgotten by neither. An elaborately folded half sheet of colored note paper, in the fashion of the period.

He opened this with all the delight of attaining a new discovery. She tended to draw backward-the sign and measure of her equal interest.

'We, R. P. and M. D., swear that we will marry each other some day. This is a sworn secret.'

It was signed with a sprawling 'Robert Pardon' and 'Margaret Evelyn Deane.'

"To think I could write as atrociously as that!' said he.

'To think I could set my signature to such nonsense!' she declared; but her face was rosy, and looked wonderfully youthful under the silvery hair.

'Oh, come now, Meg!' said he. 'Why not?'

'Why not?' she echoed, and looked at him aghast.

'And I oh, Robert, there was always a corner of my heart, but at our age

"Fiddlesticks! Our age! We're hardly grown up. Think of the years we did n't live. We- we must n't disappoint the old garden.'

And that evening the spirit haunting the leafy place, in its wonderful peace, knew that never had its grass, flowers, leaves, and branches been illumined with a happier light. The robin, perched upon a forgotten spade, beside an upturned heap, twittered for joy. The garden was, anyhow, undeniably happy.

as to the indecorum of the depraved that few governments feel strong enough to deny themselves the right of controlling it.

A few rulers have done so, even when they have themselves been sufferers from the comedian's satire. Louis XII is, perhaps, the most famous of them. His counselors urged him to chastise the insolence of some playwright who had offended; but he replied that he allowed freedom on the stage, and was only too pleased that abuses committed at his court, or anywhere in his kingdom, should, in that way, be brought to his notice. His attitude, however, was quite exceptional. As a rule, it has taken a revolution to overthrow the censor; but it has not always needed a counter-revolution to restore his office. The revolutionists themselves have often felt constrained to revive it as a barrier against reactionary suggestions.

That, for instance, was the course of events in France in 1791 and the immediately succeeding years. Mirabeau then swept the censorship away with a magnificent gesture and a splendid peroration to the effect that 'it would be easy enough to fetter every kind of liberty by exaggerating every kind of danger, for there is no action that may not result in license.' But Mirabeau was hardly in his grave before his Republican successors were fettering liberty in the very way which he condemned, and often on absurdly frivolous grounds. 'Citizens,' wrote the authorities to a company of actors in the second year of the Republic, 'we have duly received the piece, Entrevue des patriotes, but we cannot authorize its representation, seeing that it is full of dukes, duchesses, and abbés, and that National Guards are represented as drunkards.'

An arbitrary proceeding truly; but mild and reasonable compared with the action taken, a little later, when François de Neufchateau produced a poetical drama in five acts, based upon Richardson's Pamela. All went well, on that occasion, until Pamela turned out to be the daughter of an Earl by a secret marriage. That could not be tolerated in an age which insisted that all men were born equal; and the author was promptly arrested and charged with 'incivism.' Not only was his play suppressed, but he himself was sent to prison, and did not get out again until after Thermidor.

These stories show that, where dramatic censorship is concerned, there is little to choose between the attitude of autocrats and democrats; and if anyone imagines that the autocrats, at any rate, do not give such ridiculous reasons as the democrats for the exercise of their power, he may be invited to study the annals of the Burghtheatre, at Vienna.

He will find in them an account of an application for permission to produce Schiller's Maid of Orleans; and he will also find an illuminating list of the conditions on which the permission was accorded. These were:

1. Agnes Sorel must be represented as the wife, and not as the mistress, of Charles VII.

2. In order to avoid the consequent suggestion of bigamy, the King's actual wife must be represented as his sister.

3. The Bastard of Orleans must be transformed into a vague ‘royal cousin.'

4. The title must be altered to Joan of Arc, because the word 'Jungfrau' savored of frivolity.

5. The author's name must be omitted from the bill because he was a person notorious for his revolutionary tendencies.

That is, indeed, a good example of

German thoroughness; and this is, perhaps, the place in which to remark that German organization has always played its characteristic part in this great business of theatrical censorship. The author of the remarkable prescriptions just quoted drew up a manual of censorship for the guidance of the successors to his office. One of his rules was that 'a pair of lovers must never make their exit from the stage together, unless accompanied by some person of mature years.' Another forbade the dramatic presentation of mésalliances, and added a gloss suggested by a play in which a Count espoused a gardener's daughter:

'Such catastrophes,' runs the note, 'unfortunately occur in real life; but that is no reason why they should be represented on the stage.'

Another feature of German censorship used to be that the censor's sanction, when once obtained, was final, and could not be withdrawn; and the maintenance of that rule had a very interesting consequence in the years of Franco-German friction preceding the Great War.

A certain M. Dinter then submitted to the censor a play called The Smugglers, written in the Alsatian dialect. The censor knew the dialect; but it bored him to read it. His examination of the piece was, therefore, cursory. He satisfied himself that it was neither morally objectionable nor politically seditious, and he passed it without minute scrutiny. Unobserved by him, however, there lurked in it three treasonable words: Vive la France! That single exclamation made the fortune of the drama. It was cheered to the echo; and horrified officialdom called upon the author to excise the offensive sentiment. His rejoinder was to produce his permit, flourish it in the faces of the police, and challenge them to do their worst. They referred to the

law, and found that they could do nothing at all; and the Alsatian stage continued to ring with the cry: Vive la France!

That, perhaps, is the best of the stories of the evasion of the censorship, but there are many others. Of one of them M. Henry Bataille is the hero. One of his pieces was returned to him with an urgent demand for certain excisions. He made the excisions, but then reinserted the excised passages on the next page of his manuscript, and returned it, to be censored a second time. The censor satisfied himself that the phrases to which he had drawn attention had been struck out, but did not look to see whether the rest of the manuscript had been altered. It duly appeared, therefore objectionable passages and all- and nobody was one penny the worse. Thus did Anastasia nod like Homer; and the story may remind one of another, of which the English stage was the scene.

The play concerned was an English adaptation, produced by Miss Janet Achurch, of Octave Feuillet's Julie. Its tone, like the tone of all M. Feuillet's work, was moral; but it contained incidents to which the censor took exception. Miss Achurch and her husband, Mr. Charles Charrington, decided to argue the point with him; and after much discussion, a compromise was arrived at. The story was told, years afterward, by Mr. Charrington himself, in a letter to the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette.

'Between the first and second acts of the play,' wrote Mr. Charrington, 'the. heroine "falls," as the censor would put it, and the whole of the last two acts depends on the remorse she feels for an act of unfaithfulness which, at the end of the play, she confesses the excitement bringing on a heart attack that kills her. Husband and lover meet over her dead body.