trarch to Dante and Ariosto to both, and adorned her youth with a romance worthy of these. But a hard woman withal, and a lover of money. These latter things we forget, for she is in our tradition, and the younger Holbein in his inimitable portrait remembers none of them. It is the same everywhere. Families, institutions, schools, colleges, churches, cathedrals-all have their traditions, which form a sort of body of doctrine or wisdom that our souls inhabit, a body refined of all the accidentals and all the disagreeable things, a body so ideal that it is a very Palace of Souls. Peculiarly is this true of schools. The Wiltwater Grammar School has its traditions running up, or down, from mediæval times, enriched by every generation, and at last refined to such a degree that every little schoolboy becomes, as it were, not only an inhabiter of the tradition, but a veritable living stone in the structure of the Palace. Now, it so happened that the pious Founder of the school was a woman, the daughter of a Palatine house, who, herself the last of her line, vowed, as she laid her little child in the grave, to erect an eternal memorial that should be to little children forevermore what she herself would have wished to be to her son. Ample was the endowment, and in later ages as it grew more ample, surplus funds were devoted to the teaching of girls. Many a nunnery benefited in pre-Reformation days, and then after the great Revolution of 1688 a little charity school for girls was founded out of the funds, and this flickered on proud of its womanly source, but with no stately abiding place until after the year 1869, when the Endowed Schools Act made it possible to erect a school that had much the same objects in view for girls that the Old Schoolhouse, with its delightful quadrangle, had for boys. A woman of great wisdom,

iron will, and high ideals was its first ruler. She, indeed, was chosen before the New Schoolhouse on the hill was built, and she saw to it that it incorporated something of the spirit of the real foundress who lived and died so many centuries before. She was too wise to imitate the actual structure of the boys' school. Girls are, after all, not boys. But the school was built round and incorporated a very ancient building, a ruinous chapel of the fifteenth century. It had been the chapel of an old house that tradition gave to the foundress of the school. Restored, it became the chapel of the New Schoolhouse, and round this center was built in elliptical fashion the new buildings. There was an arcade or covered cloister that ran from the great school to the chapel. For the rest there was a vast ellipse of emerald turf on which the windows of the buildings looked, and all eyes saw the lovely lawn, and in its midst the architectural gem which was the school's link with the past.

Miss Grain had before her a tremendous task. From the first the school was full with its appointed number of boarders, with its considerable army of day scholars, some of whom boarded in the little town. But the school was a rabble, despite its order, its discipline, its university achievements. Years passed before it found itself. Yet Miss Grain watched the slow progress with untroubled heart. She was true to her name. She knew that the school in a sense had to die before it could be born. From her point of view it was dying all these years. Her staff knew it too, and, being young, were furious. They thought that it required merely the wave of the pedagogic wand, the magic of University hoods, the latest methods of teaching, perfect discipline, excellent taste, to make it something better than the Old School

house down, they repeated down, in the town. But Miss Grain was under no such illusion. She was excellent friends with the old headmaster, and he, a judge of wines, said to her one day, "You are laying down your wine very well, Miss Grain. Don't expect it to mature very fast." "Do you think that it will be a school in my time?" she asked anxiously. "Frankly, I do not. It took over five hundred years to bring my school to life, and to be truthful, Miss Grain, I do not think you will live so long." "But," said she, as she buttoned up her sealskin jacket and shook his hand at the door of the master's lodge ere she faced the hill and the winter wind: "Surely, we have some part in your tradition?" "Well," said he, stroking his iron-gray beard and knitting those eyebrows of his that had terrified many a rascal of a boy, "well, that never occurred to me before. Have girls any traditions?" Miss Grain replied tartly, as she passed into the gloomy afternoon: "It was, at any rate, a woman who gave you your tradition." The headmaster, who was never averse to a just rebuke, thought deeply over this, and took action. The first result of that action was a modification of the statutory schemes of the two schools, by which certain exhibitions were created for both schools bearing identical names, "The Lady Constance Exhibitions" tenable at certain places of higher education. A second result was a less tangible one. The headmaster begged the loan of the ancient chapel for an Annual Commemoration of Benefactors, and suggested that Miss Grain should also have an annual service. A third and even less substantial event followed: the presentation to the girls' school from an unknown donor of a Missal that was, in fact, known to have belonged to the Foundress. Then the school

actually died. An epidemic smote it. The girls were scattered, and Miss Grain had nearly a whole term and the long vacation to rest and think things out. When the school reassembled in the autumn she realized that it was at last alive. There was no apparent outward difference. The Venus de Medici at one end of the hall smiled benignly at the Praxitelean Faun at the other, just as if the school were still dead. But that break after a quarter of a century of unremitting work had told. For one thing the girls had been passionately anxious to get back; for another a generation of mothers had arisen who had been at the school; for a third thing the University Colleges had missed the girls who would normally have come up from the school. But these were small things. In the outside world womanhood was finding itself, and the fact re-acted on the school. The school had steadily, or rather Miss Grain had steadily, worked with the end in view that every girl who left the school should leave it with a sense of vocation and should feel that she owed that sense to the school. A growing circle of women began to look at the chapel as the center of their widening circle of time, as it had been the focus in their school days of their spacious lawn. The school began to be for a larger and larger circle something in the nature of a shrine. And Miss Grain, as she grew older, saw that her goal was possible of accomplishment. The reassembled school after the break had given her new hope. It began to give out a single note such as a great church bell gives when one taps it with the forefinger nail, a note identical with its own great boom. But it took still some time for a new girl to become incorporated, part of the spiritual structure of the Bell, so that on a word she responded with the exact Note of the School. At the old

school the boys, the new boys, instantly responded. They were, however stupid, overwhelmed by the tradition of the school, were absorbed by it and became part of its Note. Miss Grain knew that this could only slowly come unless something wonderful happened finally to weld the Bellmetal into a Bell of purest tone. The war came, and the Wonderful Thing happened. It was in this wise; and perhaps this is the true significance of tragedy, that it makes men and women realize all that they might be.

Many of the mistresses at the school were old girls. That was part of Miss Grain's policy. On the outbreak of war a number of mistresses took up definite war work, and among them were three old girls who went into training for Red Cross work: there was the gym. mistress, a paragon of muscle, good temper, and common sense; there was the history specialist, who was regarded by the Sixth as really too good looking altogether, and too just for human nature's daily food, and was suspected by the younger members of the Classical Division of being a direct descendant of a masterpiece by Skopas in the Mausoleum; and there was the minute, nervous Froebel-certificated girl who made heaven in the First Form. They disappeared from sight, and nobody thought any more of them after a term except for an occasional moan at the loss of muscle, of justice, and of tenderness severally associated with these three. Miss Grain, of course, had news of them and of their work; but news grew scanter, for they had gone East. At last came news that stang the school and the whole district into recollection. The three were dead. A hospital ship had been lost, and these three were among the missing. To the last they had stood to their task. That unnecessary item of news came to hand.

The Greek goddess who had been so dear and winsome and just; the girl of thews who had been so joyous; the tender fragile little thing who loved the children so; dead, all dead, the miraculous flotsam of the tyrannous tides, dear daughters of duty dead beyond recall, silent forevermore. The Greek goddess sang like a thrush when she was happy. She sang, they said, in the boats as they were shelled-silent forevermore.

At a meeting of the staff the mistresses asked Miss Grain what announcement she would make to the school about her niece and the others. "None," she said, and in answer to expostulations replied, "You are too young to understand." The school was restless and expected something to be said at prayers, but days passed and nothing came. Meantime, the girls collected memories of the dead, little gifts, little sayings. Here She stood; there She sat; this was her song; that was her stroke at tennis; this was her book; pansies were her flowers. Gradually the dead took new form. They entered into the soul of the school. The blow seemed to have turned Miss Grain to stone. The glory of that June weather showed her old and gray, old and gray like the stones on the hill that had seen so many sorrows; gray like the houses on the moor, gray and hard amid the glories of the sun-smitten gorse and the young heather and the leaping bracken. Then one morning she announced that a memorial service for three members of the school would be held in the chapel, that each form was to elect representatives to attend, that the rest of the school would meet in the hall during the service, and she would be glad if they, in the absence of mistresses, would think over a fitting memorial. Of that memorial service it is not seemly to write, not even of the lesson beginning, "Let us praise

to bring my sch truthful, Miss G you will live so she, as she bu skin jacket and the door of the she faced the 1 wind: "Surely, v in your tradition: stroking his iro knitting those ey had terrified ma boy, "well, that n before. Have gir Miss Grain repli passed into the "It was, at any ra gave you your trad master, who was 1 just rebuke, though and took action. that action was a n statutory schemes of by which certain created for both scho tical names, "The Exhibitions" tenable. of higher education. was a less tangible or master begged the loar chapel for an Annual C of Benefactors, and Miss Grain should also l service. A third and stantial event followed: tion to the girls' sch unknown donor of a Mis in fact, known to have the Foundress. Then

no time to submit the cakes to X-rays; the advance party was aming through the gate.

'Dear fellows! I wonder which

it will be," said Emily, and clung nd my neck.

put her on one side. "I'll manage leave it to me," I said, and went ward and welcomed our guests.

mind was working clearly and idly, as it always does in a crisis. en I had got them seated round the table, "My dear friends," I said, is isn't a Christmas party, but my

inch.

I

wife couldn't help indulging in a little Christmas fun. She's just whispered to me that she's put a surprise in one of the cakes. I know her. It won't be an ordinary sort of surprise. should advise you all to keep a sharp lookout. There's a pound" (it was worth a pound to save a hero's throat from being cut) "for the man who finds anything in his cake which hasn't any business to be there."

Within five minutes two pebbles, a tin-tack, a chunk of wood and a black-beetle were on the tablecloth.

"Do you know that flutter's cost me five pounds, and there wasn't a sign of your infernal knife after all?" I said to Emily when they'd gone.

"I've just found it under the kitchen table," said Emily. “I am thankful."

'ew of the season's novels have been ted for with such interest as Ernest le's. "His Family" promises to be uccessful as "The Harbor," though aps with a slightly different public. iological problems are decidedly · prominent, though the author is keenly alive to them. The plot ves within a more contracted circle, 1 of incidents and individuals, and lers whose chief enjoyment of e Harbor" was in its striking odes may find this tame by comson. But the character drawing ore intimate, and there is a gain 1 in reality and concentrated imsion. Oddly enough, there is at *s a suggestion of Mr. W. L. rge, though the temper and purof the two men are so unlike. In 3 Family," Mr. Poole describes experiences of a New York business of the older type, as he watches

"guides" would be too strong a word— the unconscious shaping and development by modern conditions of his three daughters: Edith, absorbed in her children almost at the expense of her husband; Deborah, devoted to work among tenement-house children and divided between their claims and that of a long-time lover; and Laura, gay, frivolous and fascinating, with a disquieting likeness to her father in the far-away and brief period of his reckless youth. The story opens with Laura's abrupt announcement to her father of her engagement, and the greater part of it is occupied with marriage and its effect on the modern woman's ideals and opportunities, as noted by a shrewd and affectionate observer. "God knows I've tried to be modern," says Roger Gale to Deborah, his dearest daughter. "Downright modern. Have I asked you to give up