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and smoothness that is Whistler's best. For you all aspire to be artists.

Study your art, then, but study how to conceal it in your work. If you make it too evident-I am referring to making too much out of ornate phrasings, proudly intellectual-you will tend to blur your coloring and will forget the scheme of the whole. The construction of a house comes first, without frills; afterwards, the decoration. If you think of the latter only, you will become self-conscious and that spells a writer's ruin. Don't think too much, therefore, over the way you will say a thing-of course, the way you say it is important and goes to make up the wellbalanced artist-but look into your heart and then let it flow forth in unrepressed expansiveness and obviousness. The bluestocking is involved because he is hyper-introspective; that symbolized his age. But you, as Romanticists, should have Wordsworthian simplicity.

All the LIT. asks is that you hearken to Leslie Stephen and remember that he says Jonathan Swift, the prose-master of English, never leaned on his elbow to consider what he should write. Swift is the brimming river for smoothness-totally unstudied in his effect. He can preach a sermon without seeming to do so the editor gulps very self-consciously!-and he never preached a better one to the writers of the world—including those in the LIT.—than when he wrote that their style should be "clear, masculine and smooth, but not florid."

Now for next year. The pineapple of hospitality will be found hanging up over the LIT.'s door by all those who sincerely desire to be literary craftsmen, who have found that this is what their hands want to do, and do it with all their might. For we are the training-ship for a life of writing and self-expression, not for any fleeting, sycophantic collegiate publicity. Do us the courtesy to remember this, please, and we are your debtors. It is, and will be our mutual task to make the LIT. what it was before the war crimped its purposefulness.

James W. Lane, Jr.

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"AN

REPUTATION AND A LION.

ND did the lion really eat him?" was Edie's query, which came a little breathlessly, a little tensely, and just a little fearfully, for Edie liked the White Knight, and sympathized with him. Uncle George, who was walking between us, shook his head.

"No," he said slowly, "no, the lion didn't. You see, after all the people got angry at the White Knight for telling the bad King that he was bad, and had him put him in the cave for the lion to eat up, the night came on. Now the lion had been sleeping till then, but he began to sleep more lightly, and then his nose began to twitch, and he smelt the White Knight, and felt hungry. All of a sudden, he woke up with a terrible start, and shivered all over-it was all dark, and his eyes hadn't lit up!"

"Oh, do his eyes light up the way Fuzzy's do in the dark?" interposed Edie, wonderingly.

"Surely. The old lion is just a big grown-up cat."

"Was he ever a little kitten like Fuzzy?" This was put a bit more hesitantly, for Edie was trying to figure out something. "Why yes, Edie."

"Then lions aren't so bad, after all!" was her final word. She had figured it all out, and her tone was very decided, and had a ring of triumph in it.

"Well," went on Uncle George, "this lion wasn't, anyway, and more than that, his eyes hadn't lit up, and he was scared in the dark."

None of us spoke for a while as we walked along the dusty road. The fireflies were just beginning to sparkle in the long grass at the sides, and little sleigh-bells-thousands of themwere gaily jingling in the nearby mill pond. I wondered where my red-spotted turtle was, which I had caught that afternoon. Edie had been very angry at me for letting him go when we could have put him in the old rabbit cage and watched him grow up to be a big turtle with big red spots like the one we saw on the log but couldn't get out to. But I had let him go, and felt a peculiar pride at my matured humanitarianism. I didn't feel it in just

those words, but rather in the terms mother had used when I had kept the polly-wogs in the bath-tub, but the effect was the same. Then, too, I felt the immense superiority that my eight summers had over Edie's almost seven.

Two glow-worms were way down in the grass, and Edie noticed them. "There!" she exclaimed. "They're just like Fuzzy's eyes, aren't they?-But go on, Uncle George; you said he was scared in the dark 'cause his eyes hadn't lit up. What happened then ?”

"Oh yes. Well, then the White Knight was the only white thing in the whole black cave, and the lion saw him, and said, 'What are you?'

“Only a knight they have put down here for you to eat!' was the answer.

"I've never eaten knight before; how does it taste?"

"It's not very good, I think, and then, why do you want to eat me, anyway?'

"I don't particularly, just now, but I may in the morning. Lie down and rest-I'll wake you before I do anything to-morrow, that is, if I do do anything. You see,' the lion apologized, 'I want to give everybody a fair chance. I am not a bad lion, and only eat people because it is what lions are supposed to do.' The knight said he understood, and they both went to sleep.

"In the morning, the knight woke up first, and looked around him. He was in a big cave, with no door, but with a big hole in the roof through which the sun was shining right down on the lion, who was still fast asleep. There were no bones around anywhere, and the knight wondered just a little what the lion did with all the bones of the people he ate. He thought that they all might be eaten up, for the lion was known to be very fierce. As he sat thinking, the lion stretched, and yawned, showing all his big yellow teeth.

eyes.

'Good morning,' he said cheerfully, when he had opened his

"The knight wondered what was coming next, but he wasn't at all afraid, and answered boldly: 'Good morning. It's a fine day, isn't it?'

"The lion looked around him, and then remarked: 'Yes, a fine day. When did you come down?' he added, with a puzzled expression around his eyes and nose.

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'Last night,' was the answer. 'Don't you remember, you spoke to me before you went to sleep?'

“‘Oh, of course, you were the white thing that I could just see against the black. I do remember now.-Well, what do you say to some breakfast?'

"The knight wanted to ask, 'Breakfast for whom?' but instead, in a very self-controlled way, he answered: 'Fine! What is there to eat?'

"The lion got up and stretched. 'Come over here in the corner,' he said, 'where they won't be able to see us. I am so afraid of being seen at breakfast. I am scared to death that some day they will come down here, and then my reputation will be lost. You see,' he added confidentially, after a pause, during which he led the knight to a very cozy corner in the cave where no one looking down the hole in the top could see them, 'I have a very widely acknowledged reputation of being the fiercest lion in this part of the country. They think I eat every bone of every person they send down to me. I used to be quite fierce once, just after they caught me. You see, I was young then, and very angry at them for tying me up, even to my tail. That was the worst of it all.' He paused here, and sighed a bit sadly, and looked at his tail. It was a splendid tail! Bushy and graceful. The knight thought that it was perfectly just that the lion should look so fondly at it, with such evident pride, and it was just pride, and not snobbishness at all, as he had thought at first. 'Yes, that was the worst of it,' the lion went on; 'if they had not tied my tail, I shouldn't have anyone's life against me, but I was so angry, that I did eat him up, bones and all. Since then, I have been very sorry I did it, and have both been kind and kept up my reputation—all you need is a little diplomacy!' He had been arranging a charming china breakfast set as he talked, and then he went further in, pulled aside a rock, and brought out a basket. 'Oh, splendid!' he ejaculated. 'Enough for two! I knew Sir Adrian would not forget what I told him. You see,' he added after a moment, during which he unpacked the basket, and laid the best apple on the knight's plate, and the largest biscuit beside

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