and then taken to there house. [To no castle, mark you!]

"They had two dear dear children that were very beautiful

"They live very very happy all there lives and every boby love them.'

And who would not love a princess in a setting such as this a whole chapter is needed for these gardens of the girls and with this simple outcome of the tale, true to the child's present life!

'And while the king was gone a young prince came riding by the castle and saw the little princess smelling the fragrant violets and roses and all the pretty flowers, and picking some beautiful sweet-peas. The prince became in love with the princess, and thought he would like to meet her.

'One day the prince was taking a ride and he met the pretty princess in the end of the woods crying, near a pond and the prince went up to her and said, "what are you crying for little princess." and she said with a sob. "I have lost my ball in this pond and I can't get it. The said, "if you dont mind I will get it for you." and at the he dived in to the pond, in a few seconds he came up with the princess'es ball and he gave it to her. and she said, "oh thank you." And she ran home to the castle and she lived happily ever after.'

With the older girls fancy clambers and blossoms and comes to such fruitage that there is no time even for its owner to gather it all.

'And while he was gone the young prince came riding by the castle and saw the lovely princess in her window. Imediately he fell desperately in love with her and wished to speak to her. This was difficult because the king had all suitors put to death.

'Being an active person, the prince managed to scramble over the stone wall of the castle garden. He hid in a

rose bush [thorny choice!] and waited. He waited for the head gardener who was working near, to go away. Then he quickly took a piece of scented note paper, which he had taken from a satin bag, that hung around his horse's kneck. He then took a jeweled pencil from his pocket and wrote a message to the little princess. He drew a small gold arrow from his quiver and tied the note to it, and shot it through the open window of the princess's room. Just at that time the princess left her room and did not read the note.

'Soon a maid came to clean the room and she saw the arrow. She read the message and wickedly thought that she would answer it. She took some of the princess's note paper and . . .'

For one of the girls, the meeting of the prince and princess does not occur until the prince- the princess at a distance sees him repulsed from the castle, and by letter suggests to him the ruse

disguises himself as a doctor and is called in when the princess feigns illness. Two girls, in these stories, hold in reserve the surprise that the prince is really the king's own son, the longlost brother of the princess. Another girl has the marriage come before the king's return; and when he hears the news it is to him such a shock that he dies of 'heart failure.' But this seems not to have delayed the bridal journey

first, to the prince's home, then to China for two years, and finally 'they both took a year and a half of painting.' Yet in spite of this somewhat Bohemian existence, 'they were very happy together and for the rest of their lives they lived happilly together.'

Yet the boys, too, are not without invention. For one of them also, the meeting of prince and princess is brought about by guile: the prince is disguised as a peddler. Another boyauthor has the king, in his anger at the princess's pride, give her to a beggar;

with whom a three years' sojourn is so chastening that she now obediently weds the prince. But for cumulative surprise and hairbreadth 'scapes and final tragedy, I find nothing to exceed this web from a boy of nine, just able to scrawl big letters:

'A young prince past the castle and told the princess of her beauty. He showed her a mirror in witch she saw herself. When the king came home he put the prince in prison. The princess got the keys from the guard and set the prince free. The they ran and got on horseback and road away to the princes castle. The princess father too many men for the prince father. So then the prince and the princess take a ship and sail away but the ship hits the rocks and sinks and the fish eat the prince and princess up.

'THE END'

Here is an infant Dumas, preparing to hold his own even in an art where women show such skill.

A lumbering awkwardness in many of the boys' tales gives them their own attraction. One cannot but take delight in a story where there is breathless proposal and acceptance at sight, and where the sole occasion of delay is that the princess must first pack her 'things,' whereupon she will be rite out.' And there is humor perhaps not wholly unconscious the writer is a lad with a rich Irish name - in this story where the 'wash jap' gives a glint of Californian color:

-'dismounting his horse he stepped into the castle.

'He at once saw the princess and said, "O maid you are so beautiful, that I am compelled by my father to carry you off."

"The princess would not believe this until she had looked at her image in his bright buckle.

'But she then put her chin high in

the air and with a "Get out," ordered him out of the castle. And then she walked up the stairs but did not notice a great tub of water which the wash jap had placed there, because her chin was so high in the air and she fell head-first in the tub of water.'

Yet if we can straighten our faces and summon judgment, we shall find the girls' tales-in spite of flashes from the boys-showing an imagination richer and more vivid, with a more delicate feeling of congruity. In the many stories read, but three of the girls' seemed wholly bare; while of the boys' full thrice this number bore these negative signs. More of the girls' tales seemed highly imaginative; and their stories, here as in the earlier experiments, have more of dialogue, with its sense of the speaking presence of the person. And if we note the characters beyond those given, we find that here again the girls give us the fuller stage: beside princess, prince, and king, there come trooping in from rear and wings the mother of the princess, the prince's mother and father, maids of honor, huntsmen, guards.

There is with them also an unthinking penetration into the secrets of emotion; a nicety, a sensitiveness, which is rarer in the boys. Your male child too often has his prince blare out his passion headlong from the road. hearken to this cooing, this seemly hesitation, from a maid of nine.

But

'A young prince came by the castle and stop. He rong the door bell and said let me come in. Why? said the princess. I am very tired. I wish to stay here this night. All right said the prince[ss] in a sweet voice, you my. Night came, in the middle of the night the King came home, the prince was waiting for hem to come. The princess said, in a sweet voice a prince is here. A prince, said the King? The next day the king died, and she said in a low

voice. Will you stay with me every day. I am feeling Blue. Yes said the prince do you love me said the princess in a sweet voice. Yes I love you. Oh? do you love me. The next day they were marry they rode on White horses to the castle.'

Nor do the girls show ignorance of the fiercer and less sympathetic emotions, like anger and revenge. Yet the thought of war as the fruit of the prince's boldness here came solely from the boys. And quite in keeping, they more often imagine the prince to obtain the princess by some violence to law and order - they alone have him elope with her or forcibly abduct her. With the boys, furthermore, and as we might expect, marriage plays a somewhat diminished part; the boys can more readily than the girls accept some other ending for their tale,—perhaps some comic retribution to the princess for her vanity, possibly the death of the prince and his betrothed before their wedding day. Yet with the girls, too, the tale may close not with marriage, but with the cure of the princess's vanity; not in farce, however, but by a means in keeping with a tale of chivalry by her imprisonment. And in one of the girls' stories already given, we had an idyllic outcome: the princess plays in the wood, and the prince recovers her lost ball, there by the quiet pool. But beyond romantic love and marriage, the love of little children is deeper in the woman-child; for to many a little girl, but not to a boy, the tale is unfinished until the babes have come.

If there is still a moment before we weary, the contrast in the ways of the imagination can perhaps be further shown almost as by touchstones; and first by the incident of the mirror. Until the princess stands before a glass, after the prince's coming, it will be remembered that she had never seen herself or any face or object thus reflected.

Now with any approach to life and understanding, the situation here is conceived by but few of the children, and these are always girls. In several of their stories, but in none of the boys', the princess fails at first to recognize the face seen in the glass, - fails to recognize it even as a reflection. She sees it as a picture, a strange and beautiful picture, and nothing more.

And beyond, though close upon this incident, comes a triple test. There is at the very opening of the story a suggestion of three events to come: the princess's discovery of her beauty; some consequence of this discovery perhaps vanity in her, or a simple and unchanged mind; and the return of the king. It is uncommon for the story to be carried to such completion that all three of the motives come to their fruition. But among those who do thus round out the tale, the girls are in greater number. They more often seem to feel the still-unsatisfied interests in the narrative, are aware of its interlacing parts; consequently they may be said to be more sensitive to an important element of form.

IV

And now as we turn homeward on our lingering way, which - if we have looked only to the children - has been as through some bee's meadow where flowers still are dewy, would it not be well to part without contention? 'Have we not brought with us some shadow of proof that woman's mind, before it is touched by custom, is readier and richer than man's?' some member of our company may say. And another might answer, 'Proof, rather, that she is swayed by feeling, and cannot reason.' But quieting these restless ones, let us defer to the later afternoon - or to another day-all questioning. For the wider judgment calls for a wider

survey. And even of the imagination in the realm of story, it must not be thought that we have seen what comes of the flight of the one rare bird in a myriad; for we have been looking, not at genius, but at the general, and what is met on any morning stroll.

Yet we have seen that near life's opening there is a clear contrast in one aspect of the mind. In imagination directed to form a story the plain and common girl excels the boy. But, it will be asked, is not even this due to externals? In part, perhaps, but hardly altogether. For while there are

outer influences to make the boy and girl unlike in taste for color and dress and in their games and in fortitude, yet we commonly find little or no pressure from elders nor any canon framed and honored by the children themselves that aside from their own endowment and impulse would cause them early to differ in so secret a possession as the power to weave a tale. Minor influences from without there doubtless are; but in the main I believe we have here an important and a natural contrast in the minds that later are to belong to women and to men.

THE Scene of the tale which follows is laid in the Kirghiz Steppes, part of the Central Asiatic plateau which is the ultimate birthplace of all our Western modes of thought and culture and religion. Here the writer was engaged for several years in directing the operations of a large mining company. This sparsely settled territory came under the sway of the Russian Empire about fifty years ago. Villages are scattered through it at rare intervals, some settled by Russian peasants, others by Cossacks (Kirghiz); the two classes are not mixed.

The Cossacks are a nomadic people, more nearly self-governing and independent than the peasants, and proportionately better off. Their system of land-tenure is interwoven with the privileges and the obligations of caste, which are passed down from father to

son with care and pride. In the brief summer the Cossacks lead a life of enchantment. All winter they live in filthy, ill-ventilated, subterranean oneroom hovels; yet, strange to say, they are scrupulously clean about their persons, never eat without washing the hands first, and always remove their outer boots on entering a tent or house.

The peasant is in a class rigidly defined by law. Once a peasant always a peasant. He is one of a community whose members own their land in common. Each man has the use of a certain plot of land for a few years and then exchanges it with some one else. Under this deadening system the land is doomed to inevitable impoverishment. In spite of the fatherly solicitude with which the peasant is treated by the Imperial government, his lot is not likely to improve.

The Russian women are a thing apart from the men. At table they prefer to sit together at one end while the men cluster at the other. There is no sustained conversation at the women's end, but among the men there is a continual stream of talk. The woman's function is primarily to be the mother of children and secondarily to care for the house, which means the kitchen, as the rest of the house is seldom cared for. Here, as elsewhere in Russia, rank is inevitably insisted upon; but this is part of the machinery of law and order. Humanly each man feels himself on an equality with the next. You are Ivan Ivanovitch (John, son of John) alike to the commonest workman, to your personal friend, and to the Governor General; and so are they to you.

There is no beauty to the eye in this strange, flat land, diversified by rocky areas and forests, and to the south by rough hills, but there is a beauty which can be felt and to which one cannot remain indifferent. In speaking of the country I usually call it 'the desert,' for though it is not the desert of shifting sands that we all know, I think the word describes it better than any other. With these few words of introduction I pass on to one of my clear recollections.

I

It had been a long, tedious winter. All winters are tedious when they are seven months long. The first dash of the frost giants over the hills in the autumn is inspiriting, and the first jangle of sleigh-bells over fresh snow makes the blood tingle, but before the first of May has come, the fierce winds have swept bare the level places, and where the snow lies it is driven into ice-drifts and glazed and polished by the blasts of the ceaseless storms. The landscape. looks tired and is tired, and so are you. Your fur coat and felt overshoes are

hateful burdens; the storm doors and windows oppress your house with an airless grasp; each year it seems as though spring were delayed and would

never come.

It was toward the end of April, 1906, that Henry Fordham and I were sitting in the company's office, lamenting the slow progress of the seasons, and wondering whether the weather was showing any signs of change. The old Kirghiz, Baijan, was making up the stoves for the night; in the next room could be heard the ceaseless click of the counting boards, as the clerks added the interminable pay-rolls.

Outside, a camel transport train had just arrived from the mines, heavy two-humped beasts, with their long fur knickerbockers, and humps lying flabby on their backs; the only living animal that can look an icy blizzard in the face without quailing; each camel lashed to a small pair of runners to which was fastened a basket, in which was piled about seven hundred pounds of rich copper ore. Inside the carrier's office, the Kirghiz drivers were thawing out and chattering in shrill voices: 'Aksha kerek, aksha kerek, Bai!' [Give us our money, boss.] And we could hear the invariable answer of our transportation clerk: 'Aksha ajok, aida!' [There is no money; go away.] But this did not satisfy them at all, and the hubbub rose and fell till Fordham yawned and murmured something about sending the cashier to Akmolinsk for cash, and then, rousing himself, called in a loud tone, 'Ivan, O Ivan!' and the felt-lined door opened and Ivan Korde came in, a large Esthonian, of the Guild of Accountants of St. Petersburg, bonded to the company by his guild.

'Ivan, can you go to Akmolinsk tomorrow?'

'Yes, I can.'

'How much money do we need?' "Twenty thousand roubles.'