bors all, coming out of church, recalled me to the present and the actual. "Have you been here in this damp place all this time?" my mother inquired.

"Yes," I replied, though I knew that I had been rather in "the city of Sarras, in the spiritual place," all that time.

I had achieved the Sangreal. Perhaps it was inevitable that from such a height the road should decline. Change and pain and death lay in wait for me, as for every other child of man.

We children had named our several homes for the various castles mentioned in "Morte Arthure." There was a Tintagel, and a Joyeuse Garde, and an Astolat. In the last dwelt a merry little Gipsy of a girl who was my most adored friend. My affection for her, indeed, had secured for her house the name of Astolat. I called her Elaine to myself, because I loved Elaine le Blank more than any other lady of King Arthur's court; and because a red Japanese fan she gave me (to match my Turkey red dress) reminded me of the sleeve "of scarlet, well embroidered with great pearls," that the other Elaine gave to Sir Lancelot, I assumed the part of Sir Lancelot, but, unlike him, I loved my Maid of Astolat.

One day soon after I had seen the Sangreal that little girl fell pitifully ill. Within twenty-four hours she was dead.

I never had seen death, but I was not startled to hear that it had come to Astolat. It had visited that other Astolat; the other Elaine had died. My mother, on the day before the child's burial, took me into the garden and gave me the loveliest of her white rosebuds. "Go," she said, "put these in the poor little thing's hands, kiss her mother, and come away."

I thought of the letter to Sir Lancelot that the other Elaine had wished bound fast in her hand. Then I remembered the intent of that piteous letter: "Pray for my soul, and offer ye my mass-penny." "I-I 'd like some money," I said in a low voice.

"For what?" my mother exclaimed. "To-to put-to put in the box outside the church on my way home," I quavered.

My mother did not press me further. She gave me a small piece of money, and holding that in one hand and my rosebuds in the other, I went to Astolat.

The bereaved mother was in solitary attendance. She led me into the room that had been the dead child's nursery. It was shaded, and the little figure on the bed was very still; but scattered about were the toys with which my Elaine and I had often and lately played. I was Sir Lancelot; it was my intention to kneel and pray for the soul of the Fair Maiden of Astolat. I approached the bed. There, her nut-brown curls in unaccustomed order, her rosy cheeks strangely pale, my idolized little friend lay, "as though she had smiled."

I dropped my rosebuds, I dropped my piece of money. With a wild cry I threw myself down on the floor and sobbed with an anguish almost more terrible than I could bear. The stricken mother lifted me up. She sat beside the bed, her arms around me, my head close against her bosom. "I know you loved her, dear," she said. "It is hard for you, too, to let her go."

"I thought it was like a story in a book; but it is n't," I moaned brokenly.

My words were unintelligible, but my utter grief was clear. My little friend's mother soothed me with tender caresses. For my sake, she hid her own desolation. She gathered up the fallen rosebuds and quietly bade me place them where I would. My mother had told me to put them in the child's hands, so I did. Then, taught by my love and my loss, I kissed her-hands, lips, and even her curls. Then with stumbling feet I fled home, and locked myself in my room.

Afterward the mass-penny was found and brought to me. But I wept so bitterly at the sight of it that even the other children were frightened. As for "Morte Arthure," out of that book I played no

more.

As the years have passed I have read other books-Shakspere and Dante and whole libraries of lesser ones. I have played at them, too, in company and even alone; but never again as I played alone at books that I had read before that day in which I went to take a last look at the child who had been my Elaine. Since then my starry solitudes have been dimmed with the mist of the tears of things. I suppose that, when "the former things are passed away," "and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither

any more pain," the mist will be wiped away, and again in unclouded splendor I shall play.

Does Robert Louis Stevenson, I wonder? No doubt. We all have our reasons for hoping that we may know him in the celestial city-know him "by sight and to speak to." The first poem of "The Child Alone," in his "Child's Garden of Verses," makes up my reason:

"When children are playing alone on the green,

In comes the playmate that never was seen. When children are happy and lonely and

good,

The Friend of the Children comes out of the wood.

"Nobody heard him and nobody saw,

His is a picture you never could draw, But he 's sure to be present, abroad or at home,

"He loves to be little, he hates to be big, 'T is he that inhabits the caves that you dig; 'T is he when you play with your soldiers of tin

That sides with the Frenchmen and never can win.

"T is he, when at night you go off to your bed.

Bids you go to your sleep and not trouble your head;

For wherever they 're lying, in cupboard or shelf,

"T is he will take care of your playthings himself!"

"What books do you read here? What parts in them do you play? How long do the several parts last? Who takes the other parts?" If only I may some time go and look for Tusitala, and, finding him on the shining streets or beside the crystal sea, ask him these questions! I know, of course, what the answers will be: "I read but one book: "The Revelation of Saint John; I play but one part-a child; and it is lasting me forever. The other parts? The Friend of the Children plays

Then Jehun-Era, the Golden Tongue
(Her heart was a harp by the houris strung,
Her mind was a hive with stories packed),
Told him of cities besieged and sacked-
Told him tales of the great Haroun,
Where bulbuls sing to a dreaming moon,
And lovers and ladies forever fair
Are caught in the coil of a sweet despair.
But never once, so the books aver,
Did a finger move or an eyelid stir
Of the great Mahmoud. Then the cooks
began

To bake and boil for the sick sultan.
Yes, the nineteen cooks in the kitchen
scurred,

And each foot flew like a startled bird, Till the slaves came up in quick relays, With bowls and platters on silver trays. There were pastries frail as the melting

mist,

Rosette, crescent, and caraway twist;
A jelly that quaked in a golden jar;
Grapes from the valley of Kandahar;
Coffee that smoked in an Osman bowl,
Brew for body and beauty for soul;
Sherbet cooled by the Tartary snows,
And fragrant now as the Kashmir rose;
Almonds sugared, and peaches spiced;
A citron candied, an orange sliced;
Rice from Cyprus, and figs from Fars;
Melons from under the Syrian stars;
A fish from the Nile; a lamb from Thrace;
And a larded lark that I cannot trace.
But never once, so the gossips say,
Did the rose-sweet bowl or the smoking
tray,

Did the frosted brew or the spicy food,
Draw a single glance of the great

Mahmoud.

So Leylah, with delicate touches, packed The long-stem pipe that the long day lacked;

And, lighting it, drew from the golden leaf

One waft of the white smoke,

death-of-grief.

But he scorned the pipe with a withering

eye

As he heaved a deep Vesuvian sigh. Anyhow, this is the word that ran When the world's eye wept for the sick sultan.

III

So they bore him now to the mosque, hard put

For the holy rub of the Dervish foot;
For a Dervish toe, well warmed in the
dance,

Can cure more ails than the philters of
France.

They carried him next to the praying-floor,
To touch the pillar that once of yore
The prophet jostled and made to wince,
And left it sweating the ages since.
And then they tore from the Koran's page
A verse approved by a master mage,
Burned it, and gave him the ash to drink;
But still he hung on the ghostly brink.

Now the barber came running to let his blood,

While the doctors were brewing from leaf and bud,

And rubbing with camphor and cacagogue. And mixing him many a toothsome grog, Then they poked their heads into all the books,

Scanning the pages with learned looks,Galen and Rhazes and Ibn Zohr

And great Avicen', -all the curious lore Of the palsies and cankers, the phlegms and chills,

With the balms and catholicons routing the ills.

But the aches and irks are a tricksy brood: Whatever was done, they would still elude, And the megrims stuck to the great

Mahmoud.

The doctors sighed, for I 'm told by three
That the thirteen doctors did agree-
Agree that their physic was no avail
For the great sultan with the stubborn ail.
Then one leech said (he was born too soon
By a hundred year and perhaps a moon) -
One leech dared hint that a bright-swung

ax

Had a help for him that the pill-bag lacks. At this Mahmoud, from his aching bed, Cried: "Off with the leech and his learned

head!

And the rest of you fade from the eyes of

us,

Over the miles to the Caucasus! Out of our realm to a new abode, And let it be by the shortest road!"

And this is why, at the crack of dawn, The twelve great doctors got them gone, Glad enough that their heads were on. And they went in a string, with their books and pills,