HEN people say that the movies

W are a menace, when they say

that we merely gaze with the passivity of babies at rapidly changing pictures without analyzing or thinking, when they say, "The films are robbing the race of the power of thought," I say, no. I say, look at Myra Spells.

Myra could tell you though she never will, for she does not discuss the subject that the movies sometimes generate not only thought, but inspiration. Because she will never tell you why she knows that, the duty, in which is mixed some spiteful pleasure, falls on me.

From her small lace and embroidery emporium on Main Street Myra looked out one morning to the portals of the Thelma Theater, where Asa Beebe was pasting up the posters of the new bill-Maurice Mordaunt in a drama of silent love, and a four-ace comedy. She was so pleased with this double announcement that her sudden friendliness of mind-I do not say heart, since that would be to ascribe to her an organ Rossville would have risen up to maintain she did not possess-extended almost to Asa Beebe himself. She admitted a certain agility in his manipulation of the brush and paper, and for once his wooden leg failed to arouse her grim amusement, while the width of the street rendered indistinguishable that other derision-provoking feature of his, his glass eye.

Myra had a preference for Maurice Mordaunt. She fancied he resembled that popular citizen of Rossville, Jeffrey Simms, the real-estate agent. Thirty years ago, when they had gone to school together, Jeffrey Simms had represented Myra's ideal of the modern male. Now at forty, with the added touch on him of recent widowerhood, he was the perfect man. It is a pity that such an admiration as hers could not have developed in her some corresponding charms; but the thin girl had become a skinny woman, the aquiline profile had grown sharper, the black eyes had taken to spectacles, and the long neck was now longer than necks ought to be. True, her abundant brown hair had not thinned or grayed, but on the whole Myra was wise to transfer her admiration for Jeffrey to his younger counterpart on the screen. The real Jeffrey was not susceptible to female witcheries, unless it were those of Hattie Buck, herself twice widowed, who ran the little Hope Hotel. Yet even Hattie had so far failed to land him, and it was now as good as conceded that she would console herself with either the druggist or the new dentist or old Hanson Smith.

Myra had never really aspired to Jeffrey, but just the same she had other matrimonial ambitions, nourished through every discouragement, and now indomitable at forty-three. She knew the day was gone when ordi