the Apostle, with its "huge dun cupola," topping the Empire city "like a foolscap crown." Ten minutes later

he was before the little mid-Victorian villa where he had lived with his mother these last twenty-odd years.

He opened the door with his latchkey and ran through the hall. In the tiny drawing-room, on a certain hardupholstered mahogany-framed sofa, his , mother was lying, wrapped in shawl and rug. She strove to get up. Malcolm pushed her gently back.

"Mummie, if you dare!" he said, kissing her. "Lie quiet and be good. Or I shan't take you to Droitwich with me next week."

The little woman, peaked and drawn of aspect, but of heart most warm and mothering still, put out a protesting hand. Petrie caught it in his own, marking, with a pang, the swollen joints that he had so often seen, but whose true significance he had failed so foolishly, so selfishly, as he now felt it, to understand.

"You're not to take me, Malcolm. I won't have it. We can't afford it. You've to stay here and play cricket. Doctor Custance is making me out worse than I am."

"Mummie, I shall smack you if you talk like that. I shall go and fetch the blue slipper that you kept specially for me when I was bad. Of course I'm going to take you to Droitwich. I want to see it-lots. And as for affording it, why I've all that foreign loan overtime money lying in the bank."

His mother made one more protest -it was all that, in her physical weakness, she could manage to compass

Cricket bores me. I'm sick of itI'm dead stale. I've played cricket of some sort or another every holidays that I've had. I want a change—we both want one. I can take a bicycle and go about Worcestershire and look at old houses-and things like that."

Then, as he saw his mother would oppose him no more, he jumped quickly to his feet.

I must go

"Just a second, Mummie. and wash and get on some other clothes. Then I'll come down and read to you-if you'll be good and stay quite still and not move from where you are."

Half a minute later he opened his bedroom door. He changed hurriedly, turned to go out. Then, suddenly, he went back to a little bookcase bureau beside his bed, lowered the flap of it, took pen and paper, and wrote. When he had finished he read over the written words. He fastened down the envelope, wrote the address. And in the act of it he remembered the chief who had contrived the leave for which he had asked.

"Poor old Gordon," he thought. "Poor old chap. He'll be sick, I know-awful sick. I believe at heart he was even keener than me."

Sud

He turned doorwards again, then stopped, his eye stayed by a bat-rack, full of bats. He walked, of instinct, across to it, took out one of them, swung it, making mimic strokes. denly he realized the circumstances— knew, in a flash, the folly of what he did. With a little laugh, he replaced the bat, stood for a moment looking at it from the middle of the bare kamptuliconed floor.

"Heigho!" he said presently. "Heigho!"

The exclamation meant many things. It meant, to Petrie, as much as it meant to the great statesman when he said, "Roll up the map. It will not be wanted these ten years!" Only in Pet

rie's case the map was rolled up for as long as Petrie lived.

One morning, about a fortnight later, he was sitting in the gardens before the Brine Baths with a paper in his hand, listening-half-listening only-to the anæmic, under-instrumented band that scraped its out-of-date musical-play refrains to the waiting throng. His mother was having hot immersion within. In the gardens were people in various stages of rheumatism-all old or middle-aged, never a sign of youth about him or around. Petrie, bored to the point of extinction, depressed to distraction's nadir, pulled himself together with an effort and forced himself to read.

Presently he felt a hand on his shoulder, heard a cheery voice.

"Mornin'. Good day, isn't it? Just seen your mother again."

Petrie looked up. It was the physician to whom Doctor Custance had written and under whose care Mrs. Petrie had been placed.

"Ah, good morning-yes, quite a good day. How's my mother doing? Can you tell yet?"

"Oh, uncommon well, I think. But she mustn't overdo it, don't you know. Make her lie down immediately she gets back to her lodgings and, above all, don't let her get depressed."

Petrie smiled ruefully.

"I can promise the one," he said. "As for the other, I can only do my best."

The physician looked at him with keen, quizzical eyes.

"Then you don't find us gay here?" he asked, smiling in turn.

Petrie hesitated; then, as the other laughed aloud, he laughed frankly back.

"Well, not exactly riotous," he explained. "There isn't, is there, so awfully much to do!"

The other looked inexpressibly grave. "My dear man," he said: "I've hamLIVING AGE. VOL. LVI. 2932

mered at 'em till I'm black in the face. There's no casino, no winter garden, no decent music, no anything at all. Except, of course, the Brine. That's incomparable, if you like."

He paused, looking at Petrie, sizing him carefully up.

"You're a cricketer," he ventured. "Isn't that the 'Incog' tie?"

"Yes," said Petrie, "it is."

"I thought as much. Well, look here, if you'd like some cricket let me know. There's no ground in Droitwich fit to play on, but at Worcester there's any amount. If you like I'll write to somebody and get you a game or two." Petrie wavered, then stiffened, very suddenly, up.

"Oh, thanks very much," he said. "But I'm not very keen. I'm quite content to slack about. It's a change. I get lots of cricket at home."

He spoke coldly, the need to cloak his feelings making him almost rude. The physician noticed the change of tone-and resented it. After all, he had only meant to be polite.

"Just as you like," he said carelessly, "just as you like."

Then he threw out a commonplace before he turned away.

"Good score against Kent yesterday, I see. Their bowlers got collared at last. The old hands are a bit stale, I expect. Even the champion county wants some new blood now and then."

"Er-yes," agreed Petrie, icily. "I -er-suppose it does."

There was an awkward silence. The physician, a very quick-tempered, much overworked man, nodded, outwardly courteous, but furious at heart. "Good-day," he called, as he turned finally away.

"And our young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams." It is good to dream a litle; when we come to an end of our visions, we come to an end of our inspirations. Hard-headed, sceptic, materialist as we may appear to the world, we all have moments in which it is given us to see visions, to dream dreams. And the East is essentially a land of dreams and haunting visions; a glamour of romance hangs over it all, stealing from us, in greater or less degree, some of that prosaic practicability inborn in races of a colder clime.

us

So for white and black alike the East has its influence. It influences surely, though perhaps imperceptibly and against the sterner will. However, the Americans did not come to the Philippines to dream; but to "do." Yet, we believe, they too had their dreams. At the back of all their schemes for the future of this country, beneath all those wise plans for its greater good, there was a beautiful vision, shall we say, an impossible dream? For are not dreams of this flimsy stuff, and does not their chief charm lie in the sheer impossibility of their fulfilment? So we say that the Americans when they took over the

Philippines dreamed an impossible dream of perfect equality, of changing the habits, outlook, thoughts and aspirations of the people they had come to govern, and transforming this race from a brown to a white one.

We all know the old saying about the leopard and his spots; we know, further, it is just as impossible for the brown man to change his skin for a white one; but something has been done effectively. He has been stirred from his ancient slumber, awakened to a sense of his own importance. The Americans have succeeded-wisely or not-in arousing that hitherto humble and subservient spirit to something like defiance and revolt.

Yet was this exactly what the governors of these Islands intended to do when they fostered in the hearts and minds of a susceptible people ideas of common brotherhood and puissance? I cannot say. It is not often that you will get an American-or any other member of the dominating races-to own that he has made a mistake. I can only assert that the Filipino has been properly awakened; he no longer spends his days, at least, in dreaming only. He is eager to assert himself— to "do" likewise. It may be for those

dark nights of his he cherishes his own particular sueno beatifico—that vision engrafted into his pliable soul by the men who came into his land as protectors, but who, in the eyes of those who serve them, are fast assuming the character of aggressors and usurpers to be ousted from power.

This dream, I say, makes the poetry of the Filipinos' nights. It is the dream of their life to turn from these Islands those to whom they owe all they know of freedom. And they will not easily be satisfied now; it must be for them all or nothing. They demand no small honorarium-these things have been given with a bountiful hand; they require no trifling solatium for real or fancied ills, for slights or neglect; they ask no pretence of equality, but supremacy in their own land; absolute power-losing sight of all those vast improvements made in their city, the astonishing reduction in the death rate in their midst, the undoubted reformations in their sanitary and health departments, the bettering of their conditions, socially and morally, and the greater care taken for the protection of their goods, of life and limb. These things, apparently, they have no time to consider, neither can one honestly recall a single instance of any evidence of gratitude on the part of the Filipino for such favors conferred. They have no place in their mind for aught but one vast consideration, one all-absorbing project: the palm that is to be gained without labor, without-shall we say?-the right or power to hold it. As at home in Old England those foolish ones of the weaker sex are crying out for a prize they would fain renounce were it vouchsafed to them to-morrow, so the Filipino, to-day, is demanding the great necessity of his life; independence and freedom. Freedom for what? To sink back into the old slough of incompetency, the old habits of ignorance and unhealthfulness? We

trust not. But the young Filipino, primed with newly-acquired wisdom, thinks he knows best what is best for himself. He no longer cares for the good of the land for which he professes such inordinate devotion. It may remain a dreary waste and he and his family may starve for lack of its proper cultivation, while he spends his time and his money boldly and fluently pleading his glorious cause in Press or in public. That thousands in these Islands during the last months have suffered severely from the recent scarcity of rice does not deter the young agitator from his purpose. In the columns of the local American Press the necessity for manual labor and for the cultivation of the land has been reiterated with untiring vigor.

Such warnings and such criticisms have fallen on stony ground. With a singular lack of pride or obligation the assistance offered by the Government during this crisis has been accepted; but without any obvious result in awakening in the hearts of the people a sense of their own indolence and sloth. As I have said, the Filipinos to-day are a nation of one idea. They want independence; nothing else under the sun can content them; and it is the Americans themselves who have instilled this drop of poison into their veins. How are they now going to cope with the mischief they have created? What steps are they going to take to satisfy the demands they have encouraged in the eager spirits they have professed to guide and teach; or how will they at this period quench the ardent flame of mistaken patriotism kindled by their own hand?

Let me confess that I firmly believe that were this demand proved once and for all to be for the present and future good of the Filipino, the Americans here and at home would be only too ready to accede to their request. But the great point is not whether the