understand why you make so much noise, and I see no reason

Soon after the ship came out into the Mediterranean there was great noise upon the poop. An old Jew, returning at night from the prayer-room, failed to find his daughter among the sleeping family and, setting out upon a search, found her behind the anchors, with a young man. He consigned her to damnation, and on the following morning a crowd of old men, together with the father, invoked the ritual curse upon her head. She stood close to the rail while the bony hands of the patriarchs hung over her in condemnation and graybeards stood around her in a dense circle. It seemed strange that she did not jump overboard from shame, and that the old men merely cursed her and did not stone her to death. But she was quiet, and whenever her gaze met that of one of the elders she repeated her explanation:

'What of that? Well, I'm from Tarbut, and my betrothed is from Tarbut, and-"

At Saloniki, where, as in Smyrna, whole blocks still lie in ruins, a family of Greek Jews, sephardim, came aboard - an old grandmother, father, mother, and children. These were Jews of the second era of dispersion - the Spanish one. Their ancestors had parted with the ancestors of those on board the Russian ship fifteen centuries ago, and of course they knew not a word of Russian. The sun was blazing mercilessly at Saloniki, the day was golden and blue, and upon the deck the whole family, from the old woman who walked ahead, down to the four-year-old, wept, stretching out their arms and uttering ejaculations in the ancient tongue; and all of them hysterically, passionately, like brothers and sisters separated for years, fell into the arms of those on board and kissed every one.

Ahead, beyond the blue haze of the sea, lay Palestine, that land of sunbaked stone, sand, and heat; where nine months in a year there is no rain, and clouds of red dust hover constantly above the earth.

The night before the ship reached port an electric storm raged over the sea, and all night long the Jews prayed before their entry into Palestine, that beautiful, promised land, the fatherland they and their fathers had longed for for two thousand years. They prayed in terror before the raging elements and the thunder sent upon them by Adonai; they prayed as one prays before death. Then, at daybreak, a yellow streak of desert sand and rock emerged from the blue sea, and hazy mountains were visible beyond the yellow. People went out upon the deck, having donned their best clothes- many only to emphasize their poverty, wearing at this early hour things suitable only for evening. The water was green, the sky so blue that it seemed like paint. The ship was scrubbed spotless. The colors of sunshine, water, sky, and ship were harsh and primitive, without half tones, as if cut out with scissors. The coast drew near; palms, white clusters of houses, two steamers in the harbor, feluccas, and kaiks became visible, and a motor-boat darted toward the ship. The people on deck stood sober and solemn the Zionists in an orderly group, ready to intone their hymn, those in the back rows holding the blue banner. The old men and the women were ready to fall upon the sacred ground and kiss it.

Three Englishmen from the motorboat boarded the ship. The Zionists on deck shouted 'Hurrah!' sang the hymn, waved greetings; the old men threw themselves forward, to find out, to ask questions. Not a muscle moved in the dry, wind-tanned English faces. They passed the throng as if the deck

were empty, ascended the bridge, smiled, shook hands with the captain, asked about the weather, told a joke. The captain, a Russian, made expansive gestures, repeating many times his 'very mutch' and 'yes,' laughed, offered them Russian vodka and caviar. The Englishmen did not refuse, and the snow-white steward began to fly back and forth, with glistening coffee-pot, napkins, plates, past the waiting Jews.

The Englishmen seemed worried, and over the vodka debated the situation with the captain: to-morrow, on the anniversary of Lord Balfour's declaration, an Arab anti-Jewish demonstration was expected. Besides, they could not admit the immigrants until they had been disinfected and quarantined. The disinfecting station could handle only three hundred people a day, while the quarantine station was exposed to an Arab attack. The captain laughed, repeated his expansive gestures, and explained to the Englishmen that every day's demurrage cost him two hundred pounds, and that passengers must be fed. So they debated over the vodka for more than an hour, after which one of them came out and told the crowd in Russian that the authorities would receive here, in Jaffa, three hundred steerage passengers in alphabetical order, besides the first and second class, who could land without quarantine. The other three hundred would be taken to Port Haifa, to the Haifa quarantine station. He told the Jews that they must be prudent, forbade them to sing their hymn, and impressed upon them their duty to respect the prejudices and wishes of the Arabs to whose land they had come as guests. He also said that as he was approaching the steamer he had observed from his motor-boat their

Zionist flag, and directed them to leave that flag with him, the English officer.

The crowd stood petrified. The Englishman, in a firm voice, asked them not to keep him waiting, but he did not touch the flag himself. He merely ordered a sergeant to take it when it was brought out. Then the English officers returned to their motorboat, without another word to the crowd; and the passengers on the steamer saw the blue shreds of their banner, torn to bits, swimming on the sea. By that time the glow of joy in the eyes of these people, who had at length reached their promised land, was extinguished. A forlorn-looking crowd stood there on deck, just as in the times of dispersion or persecution, when every Jew instinctively tries not to seem a Jew.

Then a commission of local Jews came, to begin the official examination of the newcomers. There were no greetings; the commission sat down and began to call out names from the alphabetical list. A line of Arabs stood along the deck and down the gangplank. The nearest one seized the passenger who answered the roll-call and threw him or her down to the next Arab, who stood on the gangplank and threw the passenger to the next one down, and so forth, until the bewildered, screaming, moaning, or squealing passenger was seated on a bench in the boat and received a moaning and screaming neighbor next to him before he could catch his breath or settle himself comfortably. When the boat was packed full it put off - not toward the soil that they had waited so long to embrace, but to a disinfecting station where grown-up people were being scrubbed on command.

Their home-coming was endedor was it only begun?

I HAVE never seen Mr. Michael Arlen, but I can imagine that, like all explorers, he is tall, strong, and valiant. I am of no such courageous stuff my self, but I have a great admiration for all those whose delight it is to adventure into unknown parts. In common with many people of sedentary occupation, I like to read the histories of men of action. Books of exploration I especially adore, and I have read all those books in which Mr. Arlen tells of his discovery of that strange country, Mayfair. And as, in reading, I grew familiar with the manners and customs of the strange creatures that inhabit this country, so I became more and more certain that here had been found a race which, contrary to all laws of anthropology, bore no resemblance to humanity, except in such superficial things as dress and shape. As I learned what strange things these Mayfairs did, I marveled at Mr. Arlen's intrepidity in mixing among them; as he told me their reasons for doing these things, my eyes grew round as any schoolgirl's with astonishment, and my tongue did praise Mr. Arlen in that he was as ingenious in writing of his adventures as he had been courageous in making them possible. 1 From the Adelphi (London literary monthly),

March

Mr. Arlen's books are very entertaining. Perhaps the style is a trifle pedestrian; but it carries his stories. smoothly along; and if these Mayfairs as these people are calledtalk more like the characters of Henry James than they behave like them, that is possibly more their fault than the author's. Let us be thankful that in Mr. Arlen we have an exception to the tedious ruck of scribbling travelers. Travel books are generally so boring that one finds it quite impossible to believe that anything so dull can really have happened to anybody, whereas Mr. Arlen's works are so full of incredible people doing such incredible things that one finds it quite impossible not to believe everything he tells us. This makes the records of his exploration in Mayfair exceptionally entertaining and instructive.

Mayfair, it seems, is bounded on all sides by uninhabitable desert. The explorer suggests that it is owing to this isolation that the Mayfairs have developed into such singular creatures. Certainly it is for this reason that the world has for so long remained in ignorance of them, and only through Mr. Arlen's courage in journeying across the desert are we able to sit safely at home and read about them. For years, the explorer tells us, he

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dwelt in a vile spot called Shepherd's Market, where he learned something of the speech and manners of the Mayfairs as a preparation to making an entrance into their country. Without this apprenticeship he would have been instantly discovered as a stranger, and his death would have been immediate and dreadful. He would have been thrown to the lions, large numbers of which animals the Mayfairs always have inside their houses.

Having learned the language and assumed the manners of these people, he entered boldly into their country.

One of the most remarkable attributes of the Mayfairs is some sort of power over the supernatural. Eyebrows may go up at this, but, as Mr. Arlen suggests, how else but by the possession of magic powers can their way of living be explained? Apparently these people have their every want anticipated and supplied. The richest foods, the finest wines, the costliest clothes, are theirs for the taking. Yet in Mayfair, as the explorer shows it to us, there is nothing but palaces, and all around it is uninhabitable desert: no fields, no vineyards, are cultivated, no silkworms reared. Although there are no mechanical luxuries, from trains to telephones, that these people do not use, the explorer could find no natural means by which they could have been made. There were no factories and no workers. So far as he could find out, the only occupations of the Mayfairs were promiscuous love-making, and a sort of philosophical game, called epigram-making, in which they tried to define something they did not believe in the smallest possible number of words.

When the Mayfairs want a motorcar, a house party, or an airplane, all that they have to do is to say, 'I want it.' At once a limousine is purring outside the door, the house party is

arranged, the airplane is taking them for a flight. The Mayfairs take everything they want without question. They accept the presence of food, of motor-cars, as they accept the air they breathe; and since Mr. Arlen could see that they did not make anything themselves, and since he could not see who else was making anything for them, in the end he concluded that the palaces, the clothes, the meals, were all prepared by magic.

I can come to no other conclusion myself. You are inclined to think that Mr. Arlen romances? Read his books, observe the habits of these Mayfairs, and then try to explain how it is that without labor these people possess all those things which in Europe and America are the reward only of a lifetime of honesty, thrift, and hard work. You can explain it only by magic. Since these people are able to obtain everything without visible means, the means by which they obtain them must be invisible. That, as Mr. Arlen would say, is a logical sentence. These Mayfairs are able to live in a manner which only the best and most intelligent of human beings can afford; yet, as the author shows us, they are neither intelligent nor good; and certainly they do not work. Since, then, they have the best of everything without deserving it, that is, in a way contrary to that which obtains among ourselves,the answer to the conundrum must be an unreasonable one. So I accept the notion that they are magicians.

Apparently these people-'these charming people,' as the explorer sometimes calls them—are as civilized as ourselves. They have no religion, no convictions, no creative powers; they eat more than they want, drink more than they need, talk more than they have to say, and live entirely for pleasure without being pleased. Although they are not intelligent, they are

subtle so subtle that they can do nothing but the wrong thing at the wrong moment in an unexpected manner. Indeed, they live such extraordinarily useful and happy lives that they surpass even the highest standards of modern European civilization; but if, as Mr. Arlen suspects, they are descended from humanity, it must have been a very long time ago. How long ago cannot be estimated, as unfortunately there were no records which the explorer could examine. On being asked where they came from, they replied that they did not know; and where they were going to they knew not either. Having no interest in the past, they have no historians; and having no interest in the future, they have no prophets. They live only for the moment, and find little enough to interest them in that. Having nothing much to do but eat, they sit themselves down before elaborate meals; but not having had enough to do since the last meal to make them hungry, they leave most of the food untouched upon their plates. Having nothing much to do but to make love, they pursue one another; but having had nothing else much to do except to make love, they soon grow tired of one another, and commence pursuing someone else. This is called The Pursuit of the Ideal Mate; and as it involves a constant change of partners with no risk of becoming satisfied with any one of them, it is extremely popular. Having, at length, exhausted all appetite for food and love, they find themselves with even less than nothing to do. At this stage they commence scandalmongering on an extensive scale, and they talk scandal of one another in phrases so pregnant with meaning that Mr. Arlen has been unable to make them intelligible; but having no religion, no convictions, and no desires, they soon find even scandal unexciting. Their

craving for variety becomes at last so intense, and their means of gratifying it are so unlimited, that their lives become one monotonous whirl of change. At this point they step into a powerful racing-car, and, jamming a green hat upon their heads, they set out along the road. Crying in a loud voice, 'For Purity!' they end their career by dashing at full speed into a large tree called Harrods. This tree is so called because it ends variety by putting it all in one place.

By now you may be sufficiently interested in these Mayfairs to wish to read Mr. Arlen yourself. I assure you that as yet I have given you no sufficient idea of the strangeness of their customs and their ideas. For instance, all the women call themselves 'romantic ladies,' and have for an ideal that of Purity, which they attain by indiscriminate association with young males called Pirates. The Pirates have for an ideal that of The Perfect Gentleman, which they attain by constantly discussing the ethics of misbehavior. Is it surprising that all of them, sooner or later, literally grow bored to death, and, putting on a green hat, drive into Harrods? Whether when dead they become Pure, or whether as we do they moulder into rottenness, Mr. Arlen finds himself unable to explain, for all that is ever found of them after committing Harrodside is the green hat, which is picked up and preserved in champagne by friends of the deceased.

Do these Mayfairs have children? So far as Mr. Arlen found out, the answer is in the negative. It is true that the women, after some affair of Piracy, often go into nursing homes; but apparently all they ever have there is visitors and septic poisoning. As, however, Mr. Arlen could observe no visible declension in their numbers, the suspicion that these Mayfairs are a race of magical beings grows into