at first he found it very hard to be anything else, for he found it very difficult to enter into their playtime. But by slow degrees he managed even that; his life was so desperately empty he craved for something to fill it, and his interest in them, their schoolfellows, and any trifle they would tell him was so genuine as, after a time, to attract confidence. Besides, he soon found there were definite things he could do even here: on rare half-holidays he could take them to the pit at a pantomime or a circus. Oh! the excitemeut of getting in, the difficulty of not losing one of the five in doing it! He could remember their birthdays too, and make a festival of Christmas. He did make a festival of that first Christmas after the ash tree came down-a wonderful, cheap Christmas, with little money, and much thought, Clara and her mother away, and riotous games in the shabby old house.

And so he went, feeling his way, seeking duty, only duty, till by degrees he began to lose all aptitude for anything else; till, lo! it became pleasure to him, the one thing in his life. Gradually he came to live for that only, for the boys, their work, their play, their ambition and success. Month in, month out, year in, year out, nothing else much troubled him, nothing else at all gave him pleasure. When he discovered Francis' real aptitude for literature he was a happy man, perhaps almost as happy as when he had discovered his own; he felt that fate had been kinder to him that he deserved. Inly he determined that Francis should have all the training possible to get, all the encouragement possible to give; in him, if it could be, the dream-people should live and not die. Thus things went, not for months but for years.

There were fifteen years of bondage; then came release. Of course the bonds had slackened a little before then, as far as immediate money pres

sure was concerned. Uncle John's estimate of his nephew had gradually

isen, and with justice; and the nephew's salary had risen too; but im. proved income had only meant greater advantages for the boys. Now, however, at the end of fifteen years, old John died, leaving young John (he was forty) sole possessor of the business and much stored wealth besides. The yoke was off at last.

At last! He sat alone in the little bedroom which had seen SO many struggles first to write, and afterwards far more terrible struggles not to write. The ink-love had died hard, how hard no one knew; over and over again in the years which were gone the stump of the ash tree had sprouted and put forth twigs seeking life; and over and over again he had cut them away. But by degrees they had grown less frequent and weaker, and at last ceased altogether. The little bare room had seen all this and much besides. He looked round him now and tried to realize what had been and what freedom meant. He stretched his limbs as a man who puts down a burden; and, stretching, he looked at them almost unconsciously, and somehow be came aware that his boots were neat and worn, that his coat-sleeves were neat and worn, that there was about him somehow an all-pervading air at once neat and worn. It filled him with a curious feeling of pain, and somehow surprise. He rose and looked in the small glass that stood upon his dressing-table. The face that looked back at him was a grave, kindly face, lined and marked a little, and with hair about the temples thinning and turning gray. There was nothing at all striking in the face, nothing to make it unlike hundreds of other faces that one can see any day, nothing that suggested that this man was not as other men. Perhaps a certain air of patient resignation, but certainly no touch of

the divine fire-it was neat and worn too. John had got used to that face and the change that had come so gradually; it ought not to have startled him as it did. He ought to have forgotten the face of fifteen years ago, restless. hopeful, young. He had forgotten till now, but now he remembered, and somehow almost expected to see it back. There were other things he expected back too-was sure would come in the new leisure which was dawning: the old nature, the old tastes, the old powers, the dream-people whom he had slain.

But, alas! they did not come; the leisure was there, but not the power to use it. His back had so long been bent to the burden that he could not quite straighten it now. His ash tree, his beautiful tree with its all-shading branches and greedy roots, had been cut down; it had been lopped and chopped, burnt with fire, dug out, destroyed, there was but a half-charred stump left, a landmark few but he could see, without life or hope of budding. It was dead past all recall. did not believe it, he expected life to come back with leisure, he sought to recall it; and when it did not come he sought again and again-no one knew how he sought. He would not accept defeat any more than he accepted defeat in his earlier struggles. But this was another matter and one beyond his control. "I must give it time," he said; "it will come in time. I have forgotten, but I can relearn."

He

But it did not come, it never came again; at last he knew it, for he could not deceive himself. The love of the craftsman was still his, even though the skill was gone; he could not mistake the counterfeit for the real, and the real was gone from him. And when he knew this for the first and last time, he strove no more, but quietly put the whole from him and laid away the little old inkpot which

had come out again, as a mother lays by her dead baby's shoes.

For the family, of course, the fortune was a considerable blessing. The married sisters felt the advantagethey were all married now, Clara too; she had bestowed herself rather late on a poor curate, who was the poorer for the bestowal. The boys benefited much; they were men now, even Francis and Hugh were almost men, but the money helped them all a little. They were mostly out in the world, some abroad, some with homes of their own; Francis, however, was still at home, and for him and in him John rejoiced. For him at least the fortune had not come too late-Francis should travel, Francis should work only at the congenial work of literature, Francis should have what he himself had dreamed of, Francis should be great.

And Francis had it all and did it all. and more than fulfilled the hopes and ambitions. And-some people find this surprising-really remained much attached to John even though he did not understand the legend of the cabbage garden. He did not, of course, always continue to live at home with John; it would have been inconvenient all round, he said-and John acquiesced. So when he began to be famous and independent he had chambers in town; not quite the part where John had them long ago, further west. And John and his mother lived together some way out of town. They had a beautiful garden and many pear trees. which pleased John, and a brougham. which pleased his mother; and usually one or other of the daughters or their children to stay with them, for Mrs. Feversham still found John poor company. And John was content. Only perhaps sometimes not very often, just now and then-he found himself thinking rather hungrily of the old days of cramped means and circus pits, of Euclid and face-washing and

church-going and young brothers in whom he lived. But quickly he would call himself to order and remember the other children, the nieces and nephews who were all so absurdly, astonishingly and unreasonably fond of Uncle John-Uncle John who was never too tired or too busy for children's sorrows and joys, never too wise or too hard for youth's wrongs, hopes, and distresses-Uncle John whom Divine Wisdom saved from the dream-people to bestow thus upon the real.

The cabbage-grower had said he failed when he tried to grow roses in The Cornhill Magazine.

his parable garden-the roses of loves and joys beside the humble cabbages of duty-and perhaps he did. Yet the roses seem to have come there; thickly they came, flourishing and blooming of their own accord in these later days. blooming everywhere about the path, a success even as the cabbages. And they were a magnificent success, especially the Great Feversham.

But who really was the Great Feversham some may question, for there is a certain old saying which runs "Greater is he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city."

Una L. Silberrad.

In the minds of most men there is a curious propensity to root up remote and occult reasons for things, despising the superficially obvious: as though one should spend his time truffle-hunting and trample the finest mushrooms in his quest. The more palpable and plausible raisons d'être are rejected; and this is why propinquity goes beggared of its dues. It is the solution of many otherwise insoluble problems, the reconciling of elements impossibly incongruous; and if there be a factor more potent in human affairs, let the discoverer announce his treasure-trove. Propinquity is magnetism masquerading as circumstance; it is predestination posing as chance. That useful phrase, "contiguous adhesiveness," which occurs in works on moral science, goes far to express some qualities of propinquity which defy a more explicit definition. And yet there are other attributes, which partake so unanswerably of the marvellous that a materialist will discreetly waive them. Something of magic, of mystery, of psychic forces beyond our control, of telepathic suggestions as yet unclassified-these

are constituents of propinquity, and claim a share in its results, immeasurably beyond the bald outcome of "contiguous adhesion." Moreover, in proportion as time and space contract at the touch of science, the possibilities of propinquity sensibly expand! they are already on the road to realms illimitable.

The world is peopled by propinquity. It bears the fundamental responsibility of most marriages, especially among the lower classes. Love at first sight is a rare and rarer event; but the constant proximity of potential lovers usually culminates in wedding-bells. Else how account for the amazing pairs in double harness who constantly pass us, like a Derby Day procession? Each couple is, to our assuming, more illassorted than the last; could we have had the mating of them, at least there would have been "grace of congruity." Yet, strange to say, they appear quite contented. Possibly that tolerant acquiescence in each other, which at first did duty for any more lively emotion, solidifies into as good an imitation of love as most of us may deserve or ex

pect. Perhaps, indeed, it may wear even better than the genuine article, which is apt, according to all the wisdom of the ancients, to suffer a seachange when storms arise. Nay, more; in the very countenances of those longwedded a strange similarity accrues, until you shall perceive in husband and wife such unity of unmistakable likeness that they might pass for brother and sister. The mental resemblance, if we credit the cynic of Locksley Hall, is no less apparent. And, indeed, the effects of propinquity extend themselves into such inconceivable quarters as may hardly be hinted at, and could scarcely be credited. Even the couvade, which perished under the trouncing of Aucassin in its last European haunt at Toureloure town, and only lingers, secretly and obsolescent, among certain savage tribes-even the couvade, has occasionally its justification, or very nearly so. As time passes, propinquity toughens into necessity; and when the last separation wrenches man and wife apart, it is often but for an hour or two. Through sheer force of habit old Darby is incapable of sustaining a life that lacks old Joan.

But matrimony, that "conspiracy of two against the world," reveals propinquity in its less doubtful aspects. The contagion of bad company is notorious; some men are especially susceptible, taking color from their environment much as flora and fauna do. They succumb without resistance to that evil aura emanating from vicious comrades, to which others might present a stonewall indifference. And then the wiseacres crystallize platitudes into proverbs-"Birds of a feather flock together"; "A man is known by his friends"; or, in the immortal words of English as she is spoke, "Tell me whom thou frequent, I will tell you which you are!" On a larger scale, these curiosities of propinquity repeat themselves in the delirious excesses of

crowds. A communicable madness inspires their frenzy; the multitude perpetrates that to which no single man would have consented. When two armies or two navies are in each other's immediate vicinity the air is so thick with mutual incitements to slaughter that a single spark of accident may wreck the diplomacy of a century. And in the ensuing warfare even the arch-foe will be shorn of his terrors; for a contemptuous familiarity is bred of propinquity to death.

That transparency of mind by which one's unspoken thoughts become the property of another seldom exists except between those on terms of the closest affection; but it is capable of influencing whole communities. Hence the astounding eccentricities of certain sects, and the unaccountable sequences of obsession which occur from time to time among the half-civilized.

.

But there is one direction in which you may indulge propinquity to the top of its bent; where you may yield yourself absolutely to the spell of it, until you become conscious of something far more deeply interfused with the fibres of your being than ever your spendthrift days have found. In that communion with Nature, at which so many have dimly guessed, which so few may hope to realize, propinquity is the outward manifestation of a spiritual oneness-a union such as experience can but vaguely suggest. It is comparable to the love of mother and child, in that it takes hold upon eternity; yet it transcends all that we know of human relationships and their inexorable finał tragedy. For, though that process by which one is reabsorbed into his mother Nature, till his pulse beat in utter unison with hers, be but a gradual growth, it has promise of futurity; and to be "rolled round in earth's diurnal course with rocks and stones and trees" implies, at least, a continuance rather than a suspension of vital forces "The

sounding cataract haunted me like a passion"; that is what Wordsworth said of himself. But for his ideal woman he projected, not mere intimacy of companionship, not even passionate love, which implies dual existences, but complete assimilation between Nature and mortality. "Beauty born of murmuring sound shall pass into her face. .. Hers shall be the breathing balm, and hers the silence and the calm of mute insensate things."

For such a process a lifetime is too short. To detach oneself from all that would hamper, to sit loose from bodily desires, is not the work of a day; but the reward is sure and sufficient. The Outlook.

The

voice of the sea, a sounding brass to the uninitiated, murmurs unimagined arcana to the adept. The secrets of the wind, the mysteries of the hills-these are not tittle-tattle for any lounging vagrant. They are only whispered in the eager ear after nights and days of prayer and fasting. But this, as Richard Jeffries averred, "is real life, and all the rest is illusion or endurance." From the ultimate springs and sources of joy a man may satisfy his doubts. The dust and grime that clog his soul's breath shall be washed away in dew. He need be no pantheist who finds among the pensive solitudes of Nature a short cut to God.

THE DINNER PARTY. Scene The Library of a Country House at 5.15 p.m. on an Autumn afternoon. Tea is just over. He is about to light a cigarette. She is still sitting in her presidential position at the tea table. He. But what's the point of having a dinner? Why have we got to give one? What's the use

She (scornfully). Don't be a base utilitarian. There's no use in a cigarette, but you're going to have one.

He. I am, if I can make one of your matches burn.

[He strikes a wax match viciously.

The

top drops off alight and settles on his thumb.]

He (shaking the injured part violently). Ow! Ow! Why will you have these rotten matches? I haven't got a limb on my body which isn't burnt to a cinder through this new mania of yours for cheap matches. (He sucks his thumb vigorously.)

She (laughing heartily). Oh, my dear Charles, if you could see yourself now! He. That's right; laugh away. I suppose if you saw me blazing all over

you'd think it the best joke in the world. (Continues sucking.)

She (seriously). Certainly not, Charles. I should be very, very sorry. I should run very fast for the extinguisher, and I should do my best-yes, Charles, my very best-to put you out. How can you be so cruel as to doubt me? (Turns her head away, sniffs, and dabs her eyes with a handkerchief.)

He (laughing uneasily). Oh, don't let's have any more nonsense. About this dinner, now. What day did you—

She. Never mind about the dinner. I see it worries you, and I'm not sure it doesn't worry me. Let's give it up. He. I don't see why