and hurriedly organized a Nationalist "party of action" (Fascismo) out of available elements in the riffraff of Southern cities, meanwhile starting a drive of corruption among the higher subordinates of the dictator's general staff. During November and December there were armed skirmishes between Nationalists and Fascisti in Naples, Bari, and other Southern towns. Mussolini weathered the impending storm apparently by the simple device of permitting a resumption of the attack of "patriotic" finance on the "foreign" and "Jewish" interests represented in the Banca Commerciale Italiana, conciliating the French animus behind that attack by offering official Italian lip service to M. Poincaré's adventures in the Ruhr. But to the public he presented the matter thus: was Italian Nationalism opposed to, or in favor of, the objectives which the "revolution of October" brought within possibility of attainment for the Italy of the future? If opposed, it should be suppressed; if in favor, it should get on the bandwagon again. In March, 1923, the Italian Nationalist party blended officially with Mussolini's organization.

The attack on freemasonry (February, March) was a cleaning-up operation on the battle-field where the old bureaucracy had been routed. been routed. With all its ritual of allegiance to the Great Architect of the Universe, Italian freemasonry was, under the old régime, really an employment agency covering political and civil service appointments, and a disbursing agency covering governmental patronage of the fine arts. If Mussolini allowed the issue of secret societies to be raised, it was to reassure the young men of his party aspiring to political careers that,

despite the presence of freemasons in his directorate, a brand-new set of wires had been provided for "pull."

Mussolini himself is reported to be behind a new and slowly developing realinement of labor forces, which would absorb all doctrinal differences (Socialism, Anarchism, Catholicism, guildism) in a patriotic formula, and in the end, make the masses again the strongest concentration of political power in the nation. At the moment the class struggle is in a state of forced arbitration.

The question of democracy is being debated, as lost causes are debated, warmly and academically. The middle-class elements in Fascismo naturally look forward to a rehabilitation of Parliament, in which they will for the present guarantee a Fascista majority by Fascista methods. Mussolini is opposed to democracy in principle and to parliaments in particular. He prefers a small group of "willing workers" at least till he has completed and tested his reform program.

Mussolini may indeed be aspiring to fill the rôle of an Italian Porfirio Diaz, but his public has far other elements than those with which Mexico's beneficent dictator had to work. This is a reflection that may cheer the disappointed liberal. Mussolini's régime has modified only the executive branch of the Government. of the Government. The legislative mechanism remains intact, and he can revitalize it at any time by calling an honest election. There is no indication that he has tampered at all with the judiciary, which, it should be remembered, twenty-five years ago occupied and successfully held the last trenches of Italian democracy, whence the attack that overthrew Pelloux's dictatorship was eventually launched.

NCE, I thought that I had found the limit of incongruity. It was years ago, when, on Wellington Island, on the coast of Patagonia, I found on the beach an iron-bound box, and, opening it, discovered a little leatherbound volume, all time stained and yellowed, and the book was Dryden's Vergil. Afterward I went a-sailing with one Bill Potter, a kind of pirate fellow who took up gold-digging, and one day down in Beagle Channel he picked up the Vergil, became interested, and read it with every evidence of vast interest.

But that incident as evidence of incongruity is run pretty close by another of quite recent date, and this later one has a flavor of disjointed ends.

It brings to mind Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court," the swamp city in Jeffrey's "After London," or the classic New-Zealander of Macaulay. Idealism and decadence cheek by jowl would be a better way to put it. For once a man named Harvey, prominent in 1896, when sentimentalists and economists were talking about the silver question, made a great deal of money. So, being rich, he set about building a great castle of white stone in the wilds of Arkansas, and the building remains unfinished to this day. There, in a cup of the hills, you see the remains of a vast thing of embrasured towers, of mullioned windows, of arched doorways, and it has

the appearance of a feudal castle in process of demolition. To come upon it suddenly, unexpecting any such thing, is like a vision of Melrose Abbey in the Sahara.

The purpose of the man was stranger than his plan, for his idea was that some day, to put it exact, twentyfive years from 1896,-an ideal commonwealth would be centered about the castle, and the building itself would house poets and philosophers, inventors and philanthropists, scientists and sages, and a golden age would dawn. It was to be a place of the lit lamp and the girt loin, and because of its influence people were to be lifted out of themselves, were to be imbued with high social ideals, were to have a splendid faith in humanity. Above all, the State of Arkansas was to lead her sister States socially, educationally, and morally.

One evening, in the shadow of that unfinished dream of stone, we two who were tramping the hills made our coffee, and while so doing became unpleasantly aware of a boy with a stony expression of countenance who appeared from nowhere and stood watching us, making a very unpleasant kind of noise by whistling through his teeth. He was a lean, fidgeting kind of lad, as ragged as Huckleberry Finn, and he was full of a bovine seriousness. Obviously, we had no right to order him off, for he was not interfering, nor was he meddlesome or actively inquisitive. So, in that kindly, authoritative way in which men talk to strange young people of the countryside, we asked him his name. Perhaps he was a dreaming kind of lad and perhaps he was slow of speech, for a long time elapsed before he made reply. Then he said "By-gee," which

for a swift moment we imagined to be exclamatory until his head, nodding, showed us our error.

"By-gee," repeated my companion, musingly. Then, "How do you spell it?"

"I don't," he answered very seriously, and added by way of afterthought, "but mebbe my uncle knows how."

We hazarded "Abijah" as a possible solution, but the lad, though mildly interested, was unable to aid us; so there followed a little social catechizing. Could he read? He could a little, but did not. Did he attend school? No; and, anyway, school only "kept" for two months a year where he was, and the last teacher quit because a boy beat him up. What did he do for a living? Well, as to that, he just "got by, like the rest." A little berry-picking, a little wood-cutting, and now and then an odd job. And his spare time, of which he seemed to be so richly endowed, what did he do with that? Well, he "jest hung round with the boys." And at that point we found ourselves in a conversational cul-de

sac.

On his part, there were some things he wanted to know. Were we "the law?" If not, why did we go afoot? Had we anything to sell or were we walking on a bet? I think that we left him unconvinced of our lack of ulterior motives, and after a long and searching look at us he turned away.

But, like a figure in a Greek tragedy, he had given us a theme, and as we lay under the stars, in the roofless castle, a host of phantoms arose. For, if this lad was no rare specimen, then indeed he represented a danger, a menace, a wandering fire, and not for nothing had Arkansas at last discov

ered that she stood forty-sixth among the States in order of educational advantage, that her young men were by the draft test only thirty per cent. efficient, that in her public libraries she had only thirty-seven volumes to every thousand inhabitants. And, alas! for Harvey's dream!

$2

The next day we walked many miles without seeing sign of man until we came to a narrow place where the road fell away, so that it was a mere stone ledge in the living rock of the mountain-side, and we had to crowd and make ourselves small to permit the passage of a horse carrying a man, with a woman riding pillion. They gazed at us without speaking, not even answering our salute; but as soon as we were passed, the weather-beaten

pair, all grizzled and toil-bent, drew rein to gaze after us. Then at a bend of the road we overtook a man going the same way as we were, and with him we joined company.

He was tall and spare, and seemed careworn, as indeed did almost every one we met on our walk. High on his shoulders he carried a pack covered with a black and shiny cloth. His gray and sparse beard was forked, like the beard of Chaucer's merchant, his shirt was of checkered blue and very irregularly slashed, and it was evident that his trousers had been devised for a much larger man. On his head was a cap such as golf-players use, a headcovering but little suited for a land of beating sunshine. As old as the hills was his sort, and Piers Plowman might have rubbed shoulders with such a one on the Malvern Hills.

For a short while, after a surly greeting on his part, we walked in silence, and we knew that he was filled with that strange suspicion regarding strangers harbored by the people of the country-side. Moreover, like the lad of the night before and the two on horseback, he looked upon us as curiosities, and it is not nice to be regarded as a curiosity. However, the conversational ice being once broken, we got along very well. His talk was a macédoine of tautologies and repetitions, and he had "but smal gramere"; yet from him we learned many things, for he knew the country-side and its people very well indeed. And, let it be said, there was indubitable evidence, when he turned his face to the one or other of us as he said things, that the mountain folk who operated stills harbored no suspicion toward him.

He was, he told us, on occasion a school-teacher, a preacher, a trader in horses and cattle, a berry-picker, and a farmer; and just then he was venturing into new fields, killing two birds with one stone, and following the dual occupation of rubbing doctor and peripatetic barber. His field was, and always had been, limited, for out of the northwestern part of the State he had never been, nor did he wish to go. In his own way he had, as Sir Walter Scott said of his Highlander, "all the good manners that nature can teach."

Little by little, as we walked, he unfolded his philosophy, and we learned that in his view the law was a kind of invading entity, the state a sore oppressor. He was, he told us, a practical man and could see no advantage in government. There were no vital connections between him and the state,