I chanced upon a stalwart, jovial Swabian, who was here in the employ of the power company. He and his family were installed in a dilapidated building which had evidently seen better days. They gave me fresh eggs and a cup of excellent coffee, after which the eldest boy, a lad twelve years old, undertook to show me the town. It did n't take long to exhaust the sights, the most notable of which in local opinion is the movie-show, and at my suggestion we visited the school.

Boys and girls are taught in separate establishments here, the girls by Catholic sisters and the boys by Don Buenaventura. The schoolhouse is not recognizable as such from the outside. It looks like a shed and was possibly at one time some sort of a workshop. The teacher himself, a man some sixty years old, looked like an intelligent artisan in his green laborer's costume and cap; but he welcomed us cordially.

One hundred and forty boys of all ages between five and twenty years were sitting or standing in the room. This was the whole male school population, for Tarrega has but a single teacher and schoolroom. It seems hardly possible for boys to learn much under such conditions; and yet I convinced myself that the schoolmaster was a competent teacher and that his boys were making real progress in their studies. Naturally this demanded a good organization, and I discovered at my first glance that this existed.

The schoolmaster sat on a platform about half way down the long wall-side of the room with some ten of the oldest pupils gathered around him. He was going over a reading lesson with these. Two of the brightest boys sat on higher chairs as 'inspectors,' keeping the other children in order. Only half of the boys could be seated. These employed themselves with different writing-tasks, such as copy-book lessons, doing sums,

and drawing; or studying alone. The others stood in groups of eight or ten around the walls or in the corners of the schoolroom. An older pupil was teaching each group what he himself had learned but shortly before. For instance, in one corner a number of boys five or six years old were gathered in front of a blackboard and a little chap eight years old was writing the alphabet for them. In another corner, a twelveyear old boy was pointing out places on a wall map to some ten-year old schoolmates. The hum of questions and answers and reciting filled the hall, creating such confusion that one had to become accustomed to it, as one does for instance to the apparent disorder of a stock exchange. When any group became too noisy, one of the young 'inspectors' on the high stools would interfere; and if that was not enough, Don Buenaventura himself would intervene. Naturally, each boy is ambitious to become a pupil-teacher.

As I walked among the seats, I noticed a bright little boy absorbed in a modern novel. The teacher told me he permitted that kind of reading. The main thing was for the child to be interested in what he was studying. A twenty-year old youth was seated alone on a bench in a corner with his back toward the other children, absorbed in studying a primer. His head and back were covered with flies. He had never gone to school until he was twenty years old, but was now trying to learn to read and write before performing military service. The teacher said: 'We could n't get this young fellow to go to school earlier. There's no law to compel it here. All the pupils who attend come voluntarily. If a child does not do so, he is the sufferer. There is nothing to prevent one pupil coming when eight years old, another when nine, and a third when ten. He can study or not as he likes.' Nevertheless, the teacher was:

fairly well satisfied with the regularity of attendance and the industry of his boys. The pupils impressed me as bright, and anxious to learn.

At the end of each hour there was a change of tasks. The pupils who had previously been studying or doing tasks on the benches left their places and gathered in little standing groups, while the boys who had been standing and reciting, or teaching oral lessons, took their places at the benches for 'silent' study.

In order to prevent too much confusion, through individual students leaving the room, a little tin flag was placed up over the teacher's platform on one side of which was written 'yes' and the other side, 'no.' Most of the requests of the pupils were answered by no.

A pleasant interruption occurred when a peasant woman came in bringing the teacher's steaming luncheon to him on the platform.

All the pupils joined in singing and in conjugating Spanish verbs, especially the irregular verbs. These conjugations are more difficult in Spanish than in the other Romance languages. In order to facilitate their mastery, the conjugations are taught in rhyme and are sung. The one hundred and forty boys formed in line close to the walls and marched around the room for a quarter of an hour in goose step, singing the conjugations in time to their steps, under the leadership of a boy-conductor who stood on the platform. At first glance, this exercise looked rather comical. The children evidently enjoyed it immensely, and there was no doubt that it fixed in their memories the most difficult forms of the Spanish conjugations. Just imagine a whole class marching rhythmically in column and chanting: Io tengo, tu tiénes, el tiene, Noso

tros tenemos, vosotros tenéis, etc. The multiplication table is taught in exactly the same manner.

After an exercise of this sort, Don Buenaventura delivered a little speech to the boys in my honor. He introduced me as a lawyer who had come from Switzerland, and was particularly interested in school matters, and had made a special visit to this school for that reason. He told them that this was a great honor for himself and for the pupils. He hoped I would carry a good impression home with me, not only of this school and of these pupils, but of Catalonia. Please note he said Catalonia and not Spain. The Catalonians think themselves immeasurably superior to the Spaniards, and insist on a sharp distinction being drawn between their province and the rest of the kingdom.

After the teacher had made his little speech, the pupils again arranged themselves around the wall and sang the national hymn Salve bandera. This is sung only on special occasions. I fancy that it was in my honor also that Don Buenaventura himself beat the time, for during the other exercises, this was done by the 'inspectors.' I noticed also that, during the hymn, the schoolmaster took off his cap which he otherwise wore throughout the session.

Just before the school was dismissed, each pupil went to his seat to get his penholder, and then took his proper position in the column around the wall. Again the boys marched in goose step past the platform where there was a rack with one hundred and forty holes. As each child passed, he put his penholder in its hole-much as the flag bearers in our Swiss shooting-festivals solemnly deposit their flags in the color quarters.

A MAN I know, something of a poet, with a pronounced inclination toward living his poetry as well as imagining it, married out of his caste, a village girl. When I went to see him the other day he told me something about his wife which I have taken the pains to confirm by observation. He did the thing thoroughly, you must understand, when, at the call of instinct, or love, he decided to step down, or up, as he claimed it; for he lived unaffectedly in a cottage and did not concern himself to earn more than was subsistence on or about the cottage scale for the two of them, and what else their union might involve. He had something, and he made something. I suppose, at the outside, £300 a year came in. That doesn't go very far in these days. He did his full share of household duty, ran the garden and an allotment, and would never suffer her to undergo any of the heavy daily jobs. It was he who wound up the bucket from the draw-well, carried the coals, chopped the firewood, cleaned the boots. He was always down before her, to light the kitchen fire and make her a cup of tea. In the intervals of these tasks he observed nature, birds chiefly, and scribbled when the fancy invited. But really nothing of that matters, except to point out the brisk, conscientious, theoretical fellow he was, and is.

He said, 'My wife is a beautiful woman, as you will allow' - I did, and I do,

'and she is at the same time the most innately good woman I have ever known; but the most beautiful feature

she has, at once the most expressive of herself and beneficent to mankind, is her hands. Have you ever noticed them? Do, when you can, without her finding you out. She knows that I admire them, and it makes her shy. But watch her handle a loaf of bread when she is cutting it; observe how the fingers travel and adjust themselves, each doing a definite piece of work. Watch her sewing, and don't omit to observe the play of the hand which is hidden in the work. Watch her, above all, knitting. The handplay then is like the running of some exquisitely timed engine. I can sit and look at it for hours together, and gain thereby higher hopes of our genus than I have ever been able to afford myself until now. Some day there may be reared in this place boys and girls with hands like their mother's to carry on the tradition.'

I asked him, 'Do you allow so little for your share in the transaction? Does brain go for nothing?'

He faced it. 'You are confusing substance and accident; mental capacity with education. I am more educated than she is, but my mental capacity is not necessarily higher. Or, in any case, it is her hands against my head. I prefer to look at final causes when I can; and here the heart, or the will if you please, is the important thing. What are we actually here for? The scientists, the clergy, the engineers, and the gro cers all say progress. Progress to what end? Each of them names a different end.'

"The scientists, at least,' I said, 'and very possibly the clergymen also, would name knowledge as the end.'

'No doubt they would. The engineer would put it at ease of production, and the grocer at wealth. My answer to all of them would be this: We are here in a world which we did not make and cannot fundamentally alter. The utmost we can do is to make it more tolerable for ourselves. I don't mean by that one's self; I mean for our genus. Now the virtues which will do that are moral rather than intellectual. If you wish for a tolerable world it must be one in which you can be happy. To be happy you must be good. Happiness, in short, is an affair for the heart and hands rather than for the mind. Quite certainly you nourish the mind at the expense of the other two; and if you do that you make the world in the long run a less tolerable place. I don't say that pure science- mathematics, metaphysics, and such like-won't give exquisite happiness to the qualified practitioner. But that is incommunicable happiness

not like religion, or applied art, or domestic labor, or agriculture, all of which give communicable happiness.'

'Medicine?' I asked him. 'Surgery?' 'Both altruistic,' he replied, ‘and one at least an affair of the hands.'

His vehemence interested me. I said, 'You are indeed a lover.'

"Watch her hands,' he said. So I did. She came in by and by from her village affairs, took off her hat, put on her apron, and busied herself with tea-making. I watched her cut bread and butter, as Werther watched Charlotte, and admired. It was deftly and quickly done; and, true enough, the fingers traveled about over the uneven surface of the loaf as stone-crop embraces a 1 boulder. She was tall for a woman, and had large, capable hands, tanned by the sun to a warm brown on the back, well shaped certainly. The fingers were

long and flexible, narrow, but not pointed at the tips, which were as sensitive, or seemed so, as the horns of a snail. They worked and felt about for holding ground just in a snail's way. I saw that, as her husband had said, each had its appointed office; that, as in a boat's crew, each pulled its full weight; and 1 wondered if that was not the case with every child of Eve. Study afterwards convinced me that indeed it was not. My own hands, to go no further afield, are grotesquely clumsy. There seems to be no tactile virtue in my fingers at all. If I try to pick up a postage stamp I must claw it with my nails; if I want to take an envelope from the rack I must always bring out two. As for cutting bread and butter - what a botchery, what a butchery!

With her knitting, which occupied her after tea, the same activity of all the fingers was very noteworthy. The ringfinger was particularly adept, and with most of us it is the drone of the bunch. While she knitted she conversed with me, sitting at the open door of the cottage. Like all beautiful women, she was sparing of speech but by no means tongue-tied. Her talk, like her movements, was natural, unconscious, in harmony with herself. Though she had no general ideas, she was not unwilling to receive them, and was quick to give them particular application to things and persons of her acquaintance. And presently one thing struck me her favorite word. It was 'manage.' When I had offered to carry out the tea-things to the scullery for her she thanked me with a smile, and said that she could manage. When it was a question of a boy under a cloud and the vicar who was going to discharge him from the choir, she looked shrewdly out and thought that she could manage the vicar. She dropped a stitch in her knitting-and managed. She managed everything, and most bodies, so easily.

No word was more often on her lips. Then etymology threw a beam of light. Manage manége-handling. I was hugely pleased with my discovery. My friend took it as a matter of course. But it was getting late, and the time had come for me to go.

I had to walk round by the bridge in order to reach the starting-place of the motor-omnibus. In time, therefore, I was again in full view of my friend's cottage, removed from me now by the width of the river and valley-bottom. It stood up bravely on its high bank,

full in the setting sun. The stone was warm gray, the thatch pale gold. The door was still open, and as I looked across the water-meadows toward it my recent hostess came out, a pannikin of chicken-food propped against her hip, and stood for a moment to look, shading her eyes from the sun. Presently she saw me, and waved her handthat strong, large, good hand, so careful over many things and so capable. It is very possible my friend was right; that the energy of her handiwork was a ra diant energy.

AMONG the crowds who throng the streets of Stratford and lay wreaths on the grave of Shakespeare, gaze awed upon birthplace and relics, and make pilgrimages to the Grammar School and Anne Hathaway's cottage, how many can give any reason for the faith that is in them? Your true bigot will say that it is not for the faithful to sift evidence 'Who am I, the worm, to argue with my Pope?'- but to accept all these things on the authority of... well, of the recognized well, of the recognized Authorities. Yet it is at least interest

ing to examine the bases on which the authority rests.

The birthplace, now the house where Shakespeare was born, revered spot hallowed by the most sacred associations: who can climb its narrow stairs and tread its uneven boards, unmoved? Well, I can, for one. Because I cannot

find the slightest shadow of evidence that Shakespeare was born in this house. True, John Shakespeare, Wil liam's father, had a house in Henley Street, but it was a copyhold house, and the house shown as the birthplace is freehold. John bought two freehold houses, but he bought them eleven years after William's birth. Besides, when Garrick arranged his famous Shakespeare Jubilee in 1769 several s houses were at once pointed out as the house. Controversy raged, and the mat ger remained in dispute till the begin ning of last century, when one of the houses retired from the contest by fall ing down, and the advocates of the Her ley Street house managed to silence the advocates of the third birthplace. here we are.

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At a meeting held at Stratford i a 1847 an appeal was made for fund ch