and obedience are the puppet's traditions. He serves the author, not himself.

Mr. Browne also became convinced of their possibilities in a financial way, for anything can be given with puppets: historical plays, fairy-tales, myths, legends. Children could be added to the patrons of the theater. They would be more appreciative of puppets than their elders for the simple reason that they have more imagination. What might be termed the closing-over process has not set in on their fancy. It still sees knights and dragons, the green folk dancing in a ring. It can dramatize with equal ease the life of a sparrow on the window-ledge or the gigantic adventures of the hippogriff. Then, too, puppets are much better suited to act all the fairy rôles that the grownups are well, just too grown up to give with any degree of illusion. They make us materialists at once when they try to be dragons, gnomes, and mermaids, but the puppets can take us into a fairy world that is to the imaginative mind the natural land from which we came and to which we return every night of our lives.

So it was decided to experiment with a season of puppet-plays for children. Mrs. Edgerton and Miss Kathleen Wheeler, an English sculptor who created the puppets for the Little Theater, have achieved a medium of expression that bears little relation to the puppet of the past except that it is its logical descendant. They surveyed somewhat dubiously the little Puppen brought back from Germany, with their smooth, doll-like faces, their dangling arms and legs. The trouble was not that they left too much to the imagination, but that the primitive jointing often gave a wrong turn to the fancy and suggested comedy when perhaps one wanted sorrow, beauty, tragedy, or tenderness. Mrs. Edgerton and Miss Wheeler shook their heads, laid away the quaint little Puppen and set to work. With American inventiveness Mrs. Edgerton has originated a new jointing that makes the figure more human and pliable, and at the same time gives greater control to the puppet-master. The technical details are a trade secret, but to the original knee, hip, and neck joint she has added a waist and a head

joint. Her puppet mermaids, with their serpentine jointing, are almost uncanny in their sinuousness. Miss Wheeler, the sculptor, has done away with the doll-like smoothness of the faces by carving the masks, as they are called, somewhat roughly. The broken surfaces carry the facial expression farther out into the audience, much as the mood of an Impressionistic picture carries farther than one painted in exact detail. The skill of an artist is required to carve the mask to fit the character, the costume, and the surroundings.

Dressing the puppet is a matter of technic as well as artistry. The costumes have to be put on with so much reference to the strings by which the figure is manipulated that they are carefully fastened on once for all, and new puppets are carved for each play.

Rehearsing the little marionettes is a very different problem from rehearsing people. The problems of staging and lighting are the same, but it requires from four to seven years, the Germans say, to become a good puppet-master, so delicate and so complicated is the business of man

aging all the strings. The slightest error in their manipulation is most upsetting. It may cause the prince to flourish his sword in fine defiance when he meant to bend the knee. In the old puppet-shows the words were spoken by one or two readers, but at the Chicago Little Theater there is an actor to manipulate each puppet and speak its lines not in the squeaking tones of the traditional Punch and Judy, but in a voice suited to the character. It is Miss Van Volkenburg, with her keen dramatic sense and fine technic, who trains the actors and creates the final ensemble that goes straight to the "nerves of delight." The presentation of "The Deluded Dragon," written by Mrs. Edgerton and Miss Van Volkenburg, with prologue and epilogue by Mrs. Edgerton, was followed, after much rehearsing, by Reginald Arkell's "Columbine," given for the first time in this country, and Miss Wheeler's "The Little Mermaid," adapted from the tales of Hans Christian Andersen.

It was impossible to see the mermaid puppets without realizing the possibilities of puppets for such plays as those of Maeterlinck that have some other-world

quality people are apt to call "unreal" for want of a better comparison-plays with imaginative, strange, haunting scenes that never were on sea or land, and yet grip us with the same sense of reality that dreams do. Who has not been held for days under the mood of some dream that seemed more real than the dazzling sunshine through which he walked or drove? This new venture into an old field on the part of the Little Theater has proved so successful that puppet-plays now have an established place in the company's repertory. As the theater is very little indeed, popular prices cannot be charged; all tickets are one dollar. What Mrs. Edgerton hopes to see eventually is the establishment of the puppet-plays in some motion-picture house, many of which have been closed during the last year. Then for ten, twenty, and thirty cents it would be possible for people to see these charming plays instead of always the motion-pictures, which, as the directors proudly aver, "leave nothing to the imagination." Not that Mrs. Edgerton would like to see the picture-play houses fall on evil days, -not at all, but she thinks they should not be

the sole form of entertainment for the people, as they now bid fair to be.

Whether the few American theaters that stand for artistic drama, and ultimately some of the other playhouses, will adopt the puppet-play remains to be seen, but certain it is that our children love them. And they have always been a de- · light to the world's artists. Goethe often gave them for his friends. Indeed, it was from such an entertainment that he got his idea for "Faust." The list of English and European dramatists who have also written puppet-plays is a long one. Ben Jonson has given us an entertaining account of a puppet-play at Bartholomew Fair. Haydn composed some of his best music for the court puppet-theater where he was musical director. For Voltaire, too, they had their appeal. And George Sand was wont to give these plays for the children of her household. Gautier and Stevenson loved them, and Maeterlinck has written a volume of "Drames pour marionnettes." Of one audience the puppet-theater is forever assured-children and artists; for both can sit on a stool and enter the happy world of Make-Believe.

It was the most exciting thing that had happened in the Little Square of Marvels for many a year, and the knowledge of it burned the mouth of Pancrazio until he had passed it on, over a jug of pulque, to his compadre the charcoal-seller, who whispered it to his comadre, the tortillera, as she patted her little cakes flat in the palms of her hands, and she did not fail to pass it on to the water-carrier, who launched it to all the world at the public fountain.

And now all the peladitos, barefooted offspring of the unregarded Indian populace, washed their little brown faces and feet and assumed expressions of astonishing intelligence and zeal in the hope of being selected for such confidential service of love as might become needful. But soon all knew that Agapito, the cargador at the corner, was the lucky one. The señor pretendiente had been seen to speak to him, and doubtless had engaged him to deliver billetitos amorosos to the retainers of the House of Colors; for when he appeared next day his white cotton trousers were newly washed, and a gaping hole in his sombrero was sewed up, and he showed the world a face of such length and importance that one might be sure that he would not recognize his own mother if she were to pass him at his post.

The House of Colors had its nickname from the blue and yellow tiles covering the whole of its façade in a gay design which passing centuries had blemished with cracks and gaps. It dominated the Little Square of Marvels as any palace has a perfect right to dominate any slum. Many such palaces in the City of Mexico have been reduced to shabby uses as well as to shabby company, but this one had been preserved from trade by its family of origin, which had decayed companionably with and within it.

Not entirely had it been defended from invasion, however, for Doña Rosalia de Ramos Blancos had found it necessary, in order that she and her two daughters should keep their bones clothed with flesh, to lease the better half of the immense dwelling to another family, fortunately

almost as quiet, although not nearly as well-born, as themselves.

Small as was the rent paid by these tenants, it enabled the Ramos Blancos to maintain themselves in the station not only "of señoras," but also "of carriage." The difficulty of their being no longer able to afford the luxury of horses was overcome by the generosity of the godmother of the elder daughter, -there is no limit to the responsibilities of a godmother in Mexico, -who every Sunday patiently lent them her black mare and coachman, thus enabling them to drive to the twelve o'clock mass, which is the fashionable one, in their own carriage, conformably with the traditions of the Ramos Blancos.

Their true difficulties and sacrifices were buried in the almost deathlike secrecy of their inner life. Even their tenants across the patio or the portero below would have been shocked beyond words could they have known that the elaborate daily dinner ostentatiously served by the nana, clattering along the gallery from kitchen to dining-hall with course after course of covered dishes, was largely a symbolic rite by which the Ramos Blancos deceived their neighbors, and, I think, even their stomachs, so sincerely was it performed. The wealth of nourishment proclaimed in rotation by the old servingwoman according to her recollection or fancy-the wet soup, the dry soup, the fish, the omelet, the pigeons, the fried fruits, the frijoles, the cheese, ices, and pastry, all with their appropriate winesresolved itself as a matter of reality into whatever God permitted that day, perhaps a substantial soup and a dish of beans, with warm tortillas.

They never complained, but made as many reverences over their meager fare as though it had been all that the family ritual professed it to be, their eyes shining at the thought of saving every centavo to appear before the world as well as possible. They always dressed for dinner, and would have done so even if there had been no dinner to dress for; and although their gowns had been made over and over and the laces mended and dyed, the sleeves