the history of the limerick from the prehistoric stage, where relics are few and insufficient, to the historical, where there is a blaze of glory shining on the record. Here is a limerick which surely possesses a vivid beauty; who would guess from his other works that Lear ever wrote thus:

There was a Young Lady of Tyre,
Who swept the loud chords of a lyre;
At the sound of each sweep
She enraptured the deep,
And enchanted the city of Tyre.
Dear me, how very unobservant I am!
I shall have to withdraw my compli-
ment, for, as Lear's illustration shows,
the Young Lady was using a broom!
Here is another limerick of Lear's:

There was an Old Man in a tree,
Who was horribly bored by a bee;
When they said, 'Does it buzz?'
He replied, 'Yes it does!
It's a regular brute of a bee!'

with the 'Nonsense Rhyme in Blank Verse,' which it inspired in W. S.

Gilbert:

There was an old man of St. Bees,
Who was stung in the arm by a wasp;
When they said, 'Does it hurt?'
He replied, 'No, it does n't,

But I thought all the while 't was a hornet.'

Next we find that the limerick seems to be the favorite verse form of artists. Of the painters known to have written limericks only a few are Whistler, Rossetti, and Du Maurier. The last, besides succeeding very well in writing limericks in French, composed a classic in English, of a sort, which I recommend to all Americanization propagandists:

I am gai, I am poet. I dwell
Rupert Street, at the fifth. I am svell.
And I sing tra-la-la,

And I love me mamma,
And the English, I speak him quite well.

After this are the serious poems in limerick form which have come to my attention. Kipling used a strange

variant of the usual limerick in "The Peace of Dives,' and even stranger varieties in other poems. So unusual they are that few, I suppose, recognize them as limericks, and none haveto my knowledge-mentioned such notice in writing.

In future generations, enlightened by the renewal of vision, men will regard Carolyn Wells as the ideal rebel against the materialism of our time, in the most important limericks that are being written to-day. For, scorning the narrowness of a zoology book, she creates with true poetic imagination a new and gorgeous animal-world of her

own:

The Lollipopossum, it seems,

Is made out of chocolate creams.
He hangs by his tail

From a bough or a rail,

And he has most remarkable dreams.

Likewise she is the leading writer of those limericks which attain great suggestiveness by spelling words in remarkable fashion, on the analogy of other words similarly pronounced. I forbear giving an example from her work, as I consider that the masterpiece of this type appeared long ago in the Harvard Lampoon:

An amorous M. A.

Says that Cupid, the C. D.,
Does n't cast for his health,
But is rolling in wealth
He's the John Jaco-B. H.

Reader, is your tongue straightened out yet? Then let us proceed. Would that I might, in closing, give you a wide selection from popular anonymous limericks, great numbers of which are part and parcel of our daily speech. You would there see, for the first time perhaps, the prototypes in limerick form of moss-grown tales that you have heard over the boards of every vaudeville house, that you have read in the pages of every comic magazine. You would weep with sheer delight at seeing

so many old friends joined in a reunion. But alas! two facts prevent me from giving you this delight: the majority of these beloved brethren are too disreputable in their morals to gain admittance to this magazine; and the others are so numerous that any selection would be grossly unfair, incomplete, and arbitrary. How could I slight the feelings of so many boon companions of my youth? No, it would never do. I shall end, rather, by indicating the balms for afflicted mortals that are found in limericks. Have you vague suspicions of approaching baldness? Then comfort yourself by the pathetic verses of Gelett Burgess:

I'd rather have fingers than toes,
I'd rather have ears than a nose,
And as for my hair,

I'm glad it's all there,

I'll be awfully sad when it goes.

Does excessive modesty make you redden at every ambiguous remark? Turn for consolation to this famous limerick, by an unknown though certainly illustrious writer:

There was a young lady named Banker,
Who slept while the ship lay at anchor;
She awoke in dismay

When she heard the mate say: 'Now hoist up the top-sheet and spanker.' There are endless other panaceas I could give you from the recipe book of the limerick, but unfortunately for my benevolence, this magazine is not equally endless. It is fitting, however, for me to close with a remedy appropriate to my own troubles. If, like me,

you belong to the great army of the ugly and unashamed, as I hope from a spirit of comradeship you do, you will join with former President Wilson and myself in treasuring this limerick of Richard Burton's:

For beauty I am not a star,

There are others more handsome by far;
But my face- I don't mind it,
For I am behind it;

It's the people in front that I jar.

ON THE PERSONALITY OF OUR POSSESSIONS

THERE can be no gainsaying the fact that the neighbors, in Congress assembled, have voted our family slightly queer. It is not that we 'put on airs'; that we dress in an eccentric manner; that we speak in accents strange; or that our lives are any less well-ordered than theirs. Oh no, it is none of these offenses against the well-established social standards of a New England town. The whole affair may be summed up in a simple statement:We have named our lawn mower Gideon!

A seemingly unimportant matter, this, but what a difference in viewpoint it represents! To us, Gideon is a cheerfully and helpfully pugilistic person who, shouting his battle-slogan, sallies forth once a week to quell the upstart ranks of grass who are mobilizing for a rebellion. To our neighbors, Gideon is -a lawn mower; and he is nothing

more.

Perhaps even Gideon might be forgiven us, if he were all; but the fact is, as I can hear them protest,

"They have names for everything, even the electric toaster!'

It is true. We have. And in the eyes of our neighbors, therefore, we are 'queer.' In this particular respect they consider us morons; we have never quite outgrown the infinitely childish practice of naming our possessions. This fact modifies their respect for our opinions. It makes no difference how learned and enlightened we may appear in our discussion of religion, politics, gardening, or modern poetry - they mentally shake their heads and remain unconvinced. We have a lawn mower named Gideon.

Of course they admit that it is perfectly proper to name the family cats, provided always that one remain true

to orthodox titles like Thomas, Tabitha, Fluffy, or Nigger. If one desires to deviate a bit, perhaps even Buddy or Skipper are permissible; but when one departs to such nomenclature as Boswell, Eli, Boadicea, Huckleberry Finn, or Señor Don Alonzo Estaban San Salvador, this last as applied to a small blue-eyed scrap of a Maltese kitten, really, is n't it going a bit too far? And as for the outlandish practice of identifying the feathered denizens of the poultry-house by such names as Oliver, Harry, Walter, Ben Hur, Prunella, Elizabeth, and Martha - it is quite unspeakable!

But, worst of all, they point out, is this naming of things- inanimate objects! One day my sister, in displaying some snapshots, turned to one entitled 'Alice and Annabel.' Yes, there was Alice, right enough, but

'Where is Annabel?' politely inquired our guest.

'Oh, don't you see?' my sister replied ingenuously; 'Annabel is the tree beside which Alice is standing.'

A look of blankness swept over our friend's face.

'Oh, I see,' she faltered.

But plainly her mental vision was obscured, even when we pointed out to her our slender, lissome Annabel. To us, it would be little short of sacrilege to speak of Annabel as 'that maple tree in the front yard.' To our friend any other designation was impossible.

It is the same way with Othello, our plump, jolly little air-tight wood stove; with Araminta, the comforting, motherly, hot-water bottle; with Adelaide and Galahad, the sturdy, dependable oil-heaters; with David, the dignified elm tree; with Honza, my friendly violin; with Barnum and Bailey, our two shimmering goldfishes; with ponderous, verbose Doctor Johnson, the typewriter; and with a host of other possessions.

'AMERICA FOR AMERICANS' SOMETIMES, especially of late years, a Canadian who happens to be domiciled in the United States has a momentary image of himself as a man without a country, or rather, without a continent; he experiences much the same symptoms as Mr. Leacock associates with the sartorial disease of fractura suspendorum, or broken suspenders — a sinking feeling accompanied by a sense of loss. For he listens to Senator X's announcement that 'America' will or will not intervene in Europe; he learns how Representative Y thinks 'America' ought to improve Mexico; he sees moving-pictures of an Olympic hockey match in which Canada beat 'America'; he reads of what 'America' is doing for Christ in the financial report of the Southern Baptist Church; he hears, with concern for dear ones in Ontario and Saskatchewan, that Kansas reformers hope to carry a bill in Washington to banish cigarettes from 'America.'

Everywhere, in conversation, in newspapers, in books, 'America' means the United States; Canada as an integral part of the continent does not seem to exist in the average 'American' mind

Professor Sherman, for instance, writes a book of brilliant essays on aspects of life and letters in the United States, and entitles it The Genius of America.

This little article is not meant to stir up war; it is only a modest inquiry into the mysteries of nomenclature and mental habit and perhaps patriotism. Canada has eight million people or so, and the United States something over a hundred million, and the relative importance of the two countries is, at present, in about the same proportion. But in a few generations the disparity may be rather less, and even now Canadians may feel a certain goodhumored reluctance to resign their share of the continent to a great neighbor. After all, Canada occupies quite a respectable strip of territory, and, on the map, which, like the grave, levels all distinctions, it is certainly half of America.

There is of course a difficulty in such a name as 'United States.' However inspiring in itself, for rhetorical and adjectival purposes it is clumsy. When on Independence Day a Congressman or Chautauqua orator runs his hands through his hair and cries 'What is America's answer?' the effect on patriotic bosoms is vastly more thrilling than 'What is the United States's answer?' And you can't thump yourself (or somebody else) on the chest and say, 'I'm a hundred-per-cent United Stateser,' or, 'I speak United Statesish' —which last, as someone has said, sounds like the housemaid mopping the front steps. With the adjective American, as applied to men and things of the United States, one probably can't quarrel; it seems unavoidablesince Mr. Mencken's circumlocutions are too long for daily use. Yet it is rather odd that while an Englishman or a Frenchman or a Dutchman is a European, a Canadian or a Mexican or a Brazilian cannot call himself an

American (much less a hundred-percent American) without being quite misunderstood. As for the noun America, as synonymous with the United States, that cannot be justified at all, for the book of books has laid it down that a part is not equal to a whole.

Many good people in the United States have some astonishing notions about Canada. I have talked to some

voters - who knew that Queen Victoria now reigns in Montreal, the national capital; as citizens of a free country, they felt a little sorry for me, one of many ground under the heel of despotism. One widespread delusion, nourished by the movies and the redblooded school of fiction, represents all Canada as a wilderness of ice and snow, where virile American heroes, in the Canadian business suit of furs, revolvers, and snowshoes, breathe husky and virile proposals into the fur earlappers of pure, ardent, courageous heroines, in the great silences of the North Country, under the Northern Lights and the malignant eyes of a lynx crouching in a tree. A young woman from Georgia once gurgled with delighted fear at the thought of my driving through the Canadian woods. It was vain to protest that I had never driven anything wilder than a Buick, that I had never seen gray wolfish shapes gliding among the tree trunks that was only the modesty of a strong, silent man. She loved me for the dangers I had passed, and I — well, what average male of sedentary pursuits would rudely insist on destroying a gushing damsel's picture of himself as a strong, silent man?

But when individual Canadians achieve fame in the United States, 'America' takes them warmly to her heart and appropriates them henceforth as Americans. Sir William Osler was, and Llewellys Barker is, 'the great American medical authority.' Bliss

Carman appears in Mr. Untermyer's anthology of American verse. How many readers of the Saturday Evening Post are aware of the Canadian origin of such typical American figures as the following, who, in various ways, adorn or have adorned the American scene: Franklin K. Lane, Jacob Gould Schurman, Mary Pickford, Mack Sennett, Willard Mack, Arthur Stringer, Harvey O'Higgins, Frank L. Packard, Charles G. D. Roberts, Theodore Goodridge Roberts, George Pattullo, Alan Sullivan, Maud Allan, Elinor Glyn? Distinguished Canadian professors, if professors mattered, might be enumerated by the hundred; they infest practically every American college. Some celebrities who remain in Canada preserve their national roots intact, at least partly. I have seen Mr. Leacock's contributions to the gayety of nations welcomed in American literary and college journals as emanating from 'Magill University, Toronto' as who should say 'Harbard University, New Haven.'

However, Canada is growing more familiar to citizens of the United States. Thanks to prohibition, hospitable Quebec has become the oracle of Bacbuc for thousands of pious pilgrims, from Maine to California; and all summer long, motorists speeding along the northern side of Lake Ontario and the

St. Lawrence begin to ask, soon after leaving Toronto, 'How far is it to Montreal?'

The web of Canadian life is highly colored by American influence. There are some real, and countless surface, similarities of tone and temper, both good and bad. We suffer the familiar maladies of 'American' civilization, though in a less aggravated form. Our breakfast food comes form Battle Creek, a portion of our intellectual food from Hollywood, another portion from New York. Canada, as the weaker vessel, naturally receives much more than it gives, and is not wholly blessed thereby. But in spite of the apparent identity of Canada and the United States in their ways of life and thought, Canada in its civilization is not merely the most northern state in the Union. Canada has a distinct individuality, which Canadians feel, and feel deeply.

This Canadian quality has not got into literature very much, but it is beginning to; and there is a real and not insignificant school of Canadian painters.

So, with much that is 'American,' and much that is English, and much that is its own, that part of America which is Canada might well join an AntiLucy-Stone League of Nations and gently insist on sharing its betterhalf's name.