make much use of arm movements, and gestures play an important part in their performance. But they surely have not had the same lifelong training as the royal dancers of Cambodia, who were turned over to the monarch as small children in order that their arms and hands might be trained while their joints were still pliant and supple. Indeed, the movements of the Cambodian temple-dancers still retained something childish and appealing, presumably from their very early training, which the Burmese artists lack. The latter seem slightly sophisticated — dare I speak of primitive superculture? Ba Hta is as roguish as a rococo mandarin, and the little dancing girls who accompany him are laced in a special costume which makes their chests flat and gives an exaggerated curvature to their hips. Their round faces are powdered white, their thick lips are painted red, and some of them wear modern wrist-watches and rings.

Besides the dancers, there is an expert in the national game called chinlon, who does astonishing tricks with his bamboo balls. Every afternoon a couple of Burmese boys play this game in front of the Burma pavilion, and I should not be surprised if it became popular in Europe. A full set requires half-a-dozen players to stand in a circle and pass the ball from one to another. It must never touch the ground, nor be touched by the hands, but is batted with the head, knees, or feet. The bamboo balls, which look like diminutive footballs, have had a tremendous sale, and it won't be long before English lads are knocking them about on the Hyde Park lawns.

In India a man can bewitch away his wife, if he gets tired of her, by putting her in a basket and saying something that sounds like 'Poo-wah.' But if he wants her back all he has to do is to spread a silk cloth over the basket,

polish weapons. The encroachments of culture are indicated by the fact that the gentlemen are wearing knickerbockers, half hose, and garters. If one visits them accompanied by a blond Eve, they at once drop their work and begin to make eyes at her. Even reformed cannibals have a taste for delicacies.

In Exotica you dine at Hongkong on swallow-nest soup and shark fins. You eat at ebony tables with a mirror inlaid in the top, so that your better half can doll up while she dines. The waiters are Chinese 'boys' wearing silk pyjamas, who glide about in silent felt slippers, while you listen to a Chinese orchestra. Naturally you eat your noodles with chopsticks, even though you handle them as awkwardly as if they were drumsticks. Above all, you must pretend to feel at home, albeit like an English versifier you may long for a square meal and sigh,—

don't surprise people, you don't disturb them. There is nothing in your work that would make a sleepy visitor pause before your picture in an exhibition of five thousand others. No, Pierre Douche, you will never make a career. Too bad, too bad.'

'Why not?' inquired the honest Pierre Douche with a sigh. 'I reproduce my impressions simply in colors. That is my whole ambition.'

'But you forget one trivial little fact, my dear fellow. You have a wife and a child no, three children! A litre of milk costs eighteen sous these days and eggs are a franc a piece. Very well! And at this very moment there are more paintings on the market than there are people to buy them, and among the public there are more fools than connoisseurs. What is the moral of that, Pierre Douche? How can a man emerge from the host of the nameless?'

"Through his work.'

'Do be serious. There is only one way, Pierre Douche, to make the fools pay attention to you. You must make a spectacle of yourself. Give out that you are going to the North Pole to paint there. Wear an Egyptian Pharaoh's cloak the next time you go for a walk on the boulevards. Found a school. Scatter high-sounding phrases, talk about earth tones or dynamism, write a manifesto, disavow movement, or eschew rest. Refuse to use white or get along without black. Abandon right angles or give up circles. Found a school of new Homeric painting which uses only red and yellow. Discover cylindrical painting, or eight-surface painting, or four-dimensional painting.'

'How would I ever have the nerve?' At this moment the fragrance of a peculiar sweet perfume announced the coming of a visitor. It was Madame Kosnevska, a beautiful Polish actress whose loveliness Pierre Douche ad

mired. The revue in which she appeared swarmed with masterpieces by three-year-old children, so naturally she scarcely knew Douche's name and had little respect for his art. Installing herself upon a divan, she regarded the new canvas, and shook her blond locks as her lips parted in a rather scornful smile.

'Yesterday,' she remarked in her characteristic singsong tones, 'yesterday I was at the exhibition of the latest Negro art, which people are making such a noise about. Oh, what sensitiveness, what modeling, what strength!'

The painter hauled out of one corner a painting of which he was rather proud, and placed it on the easel before his visitor.

'Very nice,' said she condescendingly. And with these words the lovely lady disappeared, together with her fragrance and her singsong tones. Pierre Douche threw his palette on the floor and sank on the divan.

'I'll be a building inspector,' he said, 'or a policeman. Painting is the sorriest trade in the world. A success is managed by apes and achieves nothing but gold. And the critics? Instead of recognizing the masters, they laud the blockheads. I have enough of it - I'm through.'

Paul Emile listened placidly, lighted a cigarette, and meditated.

'Would n't you like to teach the snobs and the fake artists a lesson they deserve? Are you actor enough to persuade the Kosnevska and some of the other æsthetes of the tribe that you have been getting ready an entirely new artistic method in the greatest secrecy for the last ten years?'

'I?' replied the honest Douche in

amazement.

'Now listen. I will publish two fullfledged articles through which the world shall discover that you have founded the ideo-analytical school of

painting. Until you appeared, the portrait-painters in their ignorance have been studying men's faces. What folly! Art has nothing to do with the visible man. All depends on the ideas that he wakes in us. The portrait of a colonel, for example: a blue-and-gold background surrounded by five gigantic galloons, with a horse in one corner, and medals in another corner. Do you know what you would be for the world, Pierre Douche, and can you provide me with about twenty such ideo-analytical portraits in a month?'

The painter laughed bitterly.

'It would take me about an hour, and the worst of it is that—'

'Well, let's make the experiment. And if anybody asks you to explain the new method take your pipe out of your mouth, blow a puff of smoke in his face, and reply: "Have you ever really looked at a river?""

'What will that mean?'

'Nothing,' replied Glaise; 'but people will like it very much, and when you have been discovered and are fairly launched and are celebrated, then you can make a good story of it and laugh at their stupefaction.'

The varnishing day of the great Douche exhibition two months later was a tremendous success. The beautiful Madame Kosnevska, with her singsong and her perfume, no longer avoided the new celebrity.

'Oh, what sensitiveness,' she would gush now, 'what modeling, what strength, what an artistic intellect, what vision! And how, cher maître, did you discover this amazing style?'

The painter paused solemnly a little while, blew a tobacco cloud from his pipe, and said: 'But, my dear lady, have you ever really looked at a river?'

The lips of the beautiful Pole wreathed themselves in smiles and made ready for imminent ecstasies in

her gushing singsong. On the other side of the room the brilliant and handsome M. Levycœur, who stood, wearing a Bohemian-looking collar, amid a small group of artists, cried out: 'Very strong, very strong! I always insist that there is nothing weaker than painting from a model. But where, M. Douche, did you find your inspiration? In my articles?'

Pierre Douche paused a while, puffed a triumphant cloud of smoke in his face, and said: 'But really, Monsieur, have you ever looked at a river?'

'Amazing,' said the other, completely flabbergasted, 'amazing!'

At this moment a famous art-dealer, who had been inspecting the atelier, took the painter by the arm and drew him into a corner.

'My dear Douche,' said he, 'my dear fellow, you're mighty sly. These things you 've done can really be launched — made fashionable, you know. I beg you to let me have anything you do in the future. Don't don't change the direction in which you are working without telling me something about it previously. I'll buy fifty paintings a year from you- is it agreed?'

Douche sank into mysterious silence and went on smoking without making

an answer.

Slowly the atelier emptied until at last Paul Emile Glaise closed the door behind the last visitor. From the landing below murmurs of admiration still rose, until at length they became inaudible. Left alone with the painter, the novelist stuck his hands in his pockets and broke into fearful laughter. Douche looked at him in amazement.

'Now, my dear chap,' said Glaise, 'do you believe at last that we have made a good beginning? Did you hear what the little man with the pencil said? And did you hear what the beautiful Polish lady said, and the three pretty young girls who went around

sighing all the time: "So new! So new!" Oh, Pierre Douche, I always said the stupidity of man was bottomless, but this is more than even I expected.'

An irresistible fit of laughter overcame him.

The painter wrinkled his brows and, as one burst of laughter followed another, said bluntly: 'Idiot! Idiot!'

'Idiot?' said the indignant novelist. "This is the funniest story I ever heard.' The painter cast a glance of pride on the row of twenty ideo-analytical pic

tures and said with the strength of conviction: 'Yes, Glaise, you are an idiot. There is really a good deal in this kind of painting after all.'

The novelist looked at his friend with amazed astonishment.

"That's a good one,' he cried. 'For heaven's sake, Douche, remember who put you up to this new manner!'

Pierre Douche was silent for some time. Then he blew a great puff of smoke from his pipe.

'Have you ever really looked at a river?' said he.

OUR cold and stormy spring has carried off a number of estimable and simple villagers, who now sleep their long sleep in our modest cemetery. So, with the arrival of May, more altars of the Cross than usual have been erected, and with them have appeared the customary games of chance and the romping, open-air dances with which our light-hearted countrymen celebrate their escape from the dread reaper's sickle.

The other night two friends and I, moved partly by curiosity and partly by a desire to revive the memory of days long past, set out to see how the people were diverting themselves on this classic occasion. It appears that the grim garnerer of lives has taken such a heavy toll this year in the Barrio Arriba that Calle Ancha and

its vicinity are practically monopolizing the festival. Nowhere else did we see a cross where people had gathered for merrymaking and street dancing. The first we visited had been erected in a building still under construction. The dance here was lively and well attended, for thirty-six officials had contributed to its cost. I shall not violate candor by saying that the dancers were the crème de la crème of our provincial society, nor that one could honestly apply to them the words of the poet:

Whiter than milk and fairer Than an April meadow filled with flowers;

but I must confess that both the men and the women lived up to the spirit of the occasion, and danced like innocent and naïve bacchantes. I saw an old and dignified contemporary of my own