I do not know the name of the waltz, and I suppose I am the only man in the world who loves it. Every time I play it I can see those childhood years in my imagination, and every note brings to me the echo of another very distant note that reminds me of so many tender things that the tears come into my eyes; and if the piano I am playing is out of tune, so much the better it reminds me all the more sharply of Mr. Quim's piano.

Poor Mr. Quim! Infected air came in through that great gateway of his. I remember vaguely a day when I had to run to the apothecary's and have my lunch alone. There were doctors coming in and going out, and I was told that his daughter was dying and I must speak softly. I remember that I was treated with more severity than usual, that the house took on an atmosphere of sickness, and that even the broth became thinner. I remember also that one evening, while I was idly writing, 'I speak, thou speakest, he speaks,' and Mr. Quim was as usual copying his legal documents, only more feverishly than ever, he came over to me finally and said that instead of copying out that verb, which would do me no good at all, it would be much better for me to copy papers like his as punishment, for at least they would do me some good in business. So I set to work copying lines, words, and dates which of course meant nothing to me then, but which I now understand perfectly well.

I remember that one morning I was told that his daughter was dead and

that I was not to go to school until the next day. When we came back to the building we all saw the coffin borne away as if it were another piano, and heard a few stifled sobs. Then, as school let out early, I can still remember that we had more time to play battle at the fortifications, in complete forgetfulness of Mr. Quim's grief.

I do not remember anything about leaving school. About that period the scene is full of shadows, and I feel the approach of a long polar night that had no end. I only know that I felt a need for air, for air and light, and that the walls seemed to stifle me, the ceiling to press upon me, and everything to fall down somehow like a weight that I could not sustain.

A good many years later I met the master one day, accompanying some children to the school. He seemed just the same as ever, with the same rusty coat and the same protruding teeth. He looked at me without recognizing me, but I went up to him, and he was amazed to see how I had grown.

'Why, it's you,' he said to me. 'What a good business-man you must be now!'

'Well, you see,' I said to him, somewhat embarrassed, ‘just at the moment I'm painting pictures.'

'Painting pictures? What sort of business is that?'

'A bad business, Mr. Quim. It's a trade that brings in very little. You get plain rolls much oftener than sugar cakes.'

THERE has always been a singularly authoritative appeal to the imagination in the spectacle of the Bavarian villagers who for nearly three centuries have commemorated their escape from a plague by the performance of the most elaborate 'Miracle Play' in the history of the drama. If the economic distress that the inhabitants of Oberammergau are suffering at the moment is no sharper in degree than that of most Central Europeans, it is impossible not to feel that their rather special economic situation makes it peculiarly poignant. Recently the daughter of Anton Lang - for three decades the interpreter of Christ in the Passionspiel-and the daughter of Guido Mayr- the latest Judas have been in London, and a representative of the Morning Post records a pathetic conversation with them.

"They told,' he says, 'in their stilted English phrases, of the lack of food, of the lack of money, of the lack of work, in the little Bavarian village. Both are now residing in this country. But they are to return, for they are now regarded as likely to fill, when the Passion Play is given again in 1930, the respective rôles of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene. The girls pleaded, with quiet voices, the cause of the two thousand men, women, and children of Oberammergau. Yet, if Oberammergau is reduced to poverty, it has not descended to beggarliness. There is no appeal to charity. For centuries the villagers have lived by their carving and their pottery, with the aid of the

money spent among the pensions by summer and winter visitors, and with the assistance of money left over after the expenses of the Passion Play have been met. But the latest production, in 1922, was not a financial success.

"The highest charge for admission was ten marks. There were those who foresaw that, with the depreciating exchange, the receipts would barely cover expenses. Representations were made to the Town Council to alter the charges, but the Council answered: "Let it not be said that the Passionspiel is a financial venture." The prices remained unaltered - and, as Fräulein Lang said, her father received for all his time and efforts "barely enough to buy a pair of shoes." The succeeding winter is not one that Oberammergau cares to remember.

'By the summer of 1923 it was plain that international interest in the Oberammergau products must be stimulated. A delegation was appointed to go to the United States, taking with it samples of the carved religious emblems, the plaques, and the pictures. The exhibits were displayed in the main cities of the United States, and drew regularly a flood of orders sufficient to keep the industrious workers of the village busy for a year ahead. But by last autumn the demand had failed. The one hope left was for a winter of snows so that winter sports might be possible and a large contingent of visitors be attracted. That hope died as the snow melted. There have been bitterly cold spells, with the snow thick and deep,

but before the sports could be arranged the blend of sunshine and muggy days of rain had swept it away.

'To-day, because of these things, Anton Lang, the potter, has dismissed his assistants, and works, a lonely figure in his lonely shop, casting the plaques that no one seeks. Until recently Fräulein Clara, the daughter of the latest portrayer of Judas, sat silent in her home, carving the head of Christ with its crown of thorns. The art is inbred in her. Her work is delicate and mystic, like that of her father. But in a mundane world the products of the minds and the hands of Oberammergau appeared to have little intrinsic value. Anton Lang, said his daughter, will not play the rôle of Christ in the Passion Play again. He is over fifty. Whether Guido Mayr will take again the part of Judas is for the Council to decide. The play will not be produced again until 1930 three years before the third centenary of the first production.'

A DISCOVERY AT POMPEII

THE Rome Tribuna reports an almost sensational discovery at Pompeii, during the excavation work at present being carried out in the Via dell' Abbondanza. 'In the atrium of a Pompeian mansion there has come to light, in almost perfect condition, a life-size bronze statue of a youth, which, as the earth was dug away from it, emerged standing upright on its circular bronze base. In the neighborhood of the statue were found two arms of a candelabrum that evidently belonged to it. The statue probably was intended to stand in the atrium and serve in its lighting. Some restoration work has been necessary, especially on the legs, which were slightly damaged by the pressure of cinders, but the gold-work is still in its original splendor.

"The figure of the youth is shown in a posture of almost boyish grace, in harmony with the timid gesture of the arm extended in some offertory act. There is every reason to suppose that it is a Greek work of the Phidian period, and very possibly it is a representation of Pantarces, the Greek youth of extraordinary beauty whom tradition records as the victor in the competition of youth in the year 436 B.C. The flawless beauty of its form, its supple muscular pose, and its air of offering dignified thanks, appear to uphold this supposition. The sculpture will probably be assigned a conspicuous position in the museum at Naples.'

Mr. H. B. Walters, keeper of the Greek and Roman department in the British Museum, stated to a representative of the Morning Post that the piece could hardly be assigned to Phidias himself, since he never worked in bronze; and as there is no relation between its style and that of the Elgin marbles, it is unlikely that it belongs to his school. Mr. Walters is inclined to see in it a likeness to the famous Idolino life-size bronze statue in Florence, usually assigned to the school of Polycletus of the latter half of the fifth century B.C. Some details, however, suggest an earlier date, and 'one is disposed,' he says, 'to conclude that the statue is the work of an artist of a later period, such as the Augustan age, who deliberately or ignorantly combined the styles of two different periods.'

'NEW YORK AVENUE'

'PEOPLE are joking about "New York Avenue," because out of the seven theatres in Shaftesbury Avenue six are giving American pieces, and all of them successful,' says the London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. 'But that should not be taken to mean

that the American conquest of London's theatres is complete. The Shubert invasion has been a mere foray with a quick retreat, and it is quite an accident that the American plays have found themselves in the very street whose name happens to be used as a synonym for Theatre-land.

'Some American plays are partially rewritten for the English market, but it would have been impossible to do that with Is Zat So? and the courage with which New York slang has been offered undiluted to the English public has met with a reward that was hardly expected by the people who pretend to know most about what the public will pay for. Two of the American pieces that are doing well are about sport, and this subject, once a favorite of old English melodrama, has become a theme for light comedy from over the seas. There are more American pieces to come, as Mr. Basil Dean has returned with several in his pocket, and Mr. Eugene O'Neill's Beyond the Horizon is being staged at Hampstead.

'Meanwhile we are paying for our imports with exports. We take the play and send away the player. New York seems to be very eager to acquire and to retain our young English actors, who by making the trip can multiply their salaries by four while they multiply their expenses by only two. People are saying that it is becoming difficult to cast our plays as well as they should be cast because so many of our young men are being attracted to America.'

their choice. As everyone knows, this is the most popular of all operas and has been performed more frequently than any other piece in operatic literature. It can therefore, perhaps, afford to be subjected to experimentation as some less well-known operas hardly could. But more than one opera-goer will ask himself whether evening clothes will improve Goethe even in the modified form of Gounod's libretto. 'I cannot imagine,' says Dr. Arthur Eagelfield-Hull in T. P.'s and Cassell's Weekly, 'that Gounod would part with the medieval surroundings that add so greatly to the effect of his music. In the new version Mephistopheles will be a "debonair, top-hatted, immaculate roué, with a power of evil influence and an ability to be at hand at the psychological moment." Faust will be "a wearied bookworm, satiated with life, whose rejuvenation is expressed by new vigor and a shave." But from what class is Margaret to come? Is she to be acountry rector's daughter from Devonshire, or merely brought up to town. from Balham? In either case I imagine the famous "Jewel Song" will sound unreal.

'No; I am sure that Gounod would demand that his Mephistopheles wear his red tights, horns, and hoofs, and make his departures in the approved pantomime fashion through a trapdoor with a final spurt of smoke and flame. Nor would he be likely to sacrifice Margaret's long flaxen plait for all the bobbing, shingling, and cropping that Bond Street can bestow.'

MEPHISTOPHELES IN DRESS CLOTHES

HAVING 'started something' most unmistakably in their 'knickerbocker' production of Hamlet, the Birmingham Players have announced their intention of doing a similar service for opera, with Gounod's Faust as the object of

A NOVEL EXHIBITION

Nor long ago Sir Joseph Duveen, the painter, made an appeal in the British press for the encouragement of modern and living artists, who, he said, are too generally allowed to suffer for the inter

est of the artistic public in Old Masters and work of a previous generation. One of the answers made to his appeal was that picture-buyers were chilled by the unduly high prices put upon most contemporary work, and it is with this charge in mind that a new organization, named the 'I. 3. A. Club,' has arranged an exhibition of high art at low prices. Its president is no less a person than Sir John Lavery, and its vice-president Lord Dunraven.

At the Spring Gardens gallery from May 15 to May 29 an exhibition will be held at which the entries will be offered without reserve and the public allowed to estimate their value. Any visitor who wishes to purchase a particular picture will fill out a card with his name and a bid for it on the ground of what he considers its value, and when the exhibit is over each picture will be sent to the highest bidder without any public disclosure of its price. Exhibitors who care to do so, however, may have each bid as it is made posted on their works, and thus provide for a continuous but anonymous auction. No more than one work will be hung for each exhibitor.

BLAKE IN SAINT PAUL'S

IN anticipation of the centenary of Blake's death, which will fall in August, a number of his devotees in England have persuaded the Dean and Chapter of Saint Paul's Cathedral to give their consent to the erection of a Blake memorial. The eighteenthcentury poet-who said, ""Damn" braces; "bless" relaxes' was sufficiently unorthodox in his religious persuasions, but that he was one of the greatest of the mystics, a truly 'Godintoxicated man,' no one is likely to deny. He was also a very great designer whose work has been increasingly prized since his own age. 'I think,'

WELLS'S SECOND-LONGEST LITERARY London has talked of nothing latterly so much as of Mr. Wells's latest and longest novel, which is about to appear and which will be the longest of all his works except the Outline of History. Rumor had it for a while that The World of William Clissold was to be disguised autobiography, but that has been flatly denied by both author and publisher. 'What we may expect,' says the Observer, 'is nothing less than an attempt to convey an impression of life as a whole. The author himself described it the other day in a letter to a friend as "an immense book about everything under the sun." . . . A bibliographical rarity will be a special edition in six volumes, limited to five hundred copies, signed by the author.'

SMALL-SCALE JOURNALISM

THE smallest periodical published in France, according to the Literarische Welt, is called La Feuille de Choucary, and its editor and publisher is the poet Choucary himself. It appears every three months in four octavo pages. Its contents are the poems of its editorin-chief, and it can be subscribed to through any post-office. Unfortunately only one person has hitherto taken advantage of this opportunity, and he is a collector of curiosities.