too. The worst break I ever made in my life occurred six months ago. I doubt if I have yet been quite forgiven for it. I had been off to the other end of Europe on one of my too frequent trips, and the first day at the Luxembourg, after my return, I had forgotten all about those sticks of candy. I lifted Lloyd from his horse, and, heedless of the protest he was trying to make, took him out of the inclosure before, from his burst of heartbreaking sobs, I realized that I had forcibly prevented him from going to the old woman for his candy. I simply could not make it up to him. To my son I was as the Germans are to the Belgians. Atonement is Atonement is not in a child's scheme of things, and he indignantly refused a franc's worth of sweets, purchased despite his mother's dismay at a near-by kiosk. I ought not to have done it, that was all. I ought not to have done it.

The swings and steeplechase and merrygo-round are only the beginning of the afternoon's work. Now comes the guignol, greatest of Paris institutions, and.

unique joy of Paris children. We leave behind the stirring music of the merry-goround, and with each thump of the drum we are approaching, joy is manifest from feet to curls. Wee hands clasp big sous, and the children are off along the wellknown way, mingling with other tabliers, to push in beyond the magic rope for at seat at the Punch and Judy show. There is no "first come, first served" at the guignol. There is no fear of not getting a good place. Monsieur and Madame know their business as well as the most famous impresario. I doubt not that many a New York or London manager would be glad to have their bank-account. The seats are all in front of the stage and graduated. There is no need for signs. Kids cannot read signs. But the seats are none the less reserved for their particular clientele. Big kids never crowd in ahead of babies. From the three-year-olds in front, they mount to the ten-year-olds in the rear rows. When there is room, a few grown-ups are allowed in.

I shall not attempt to tell about the

show, nor how it is received by the children. An impression of the guignol cannot be conveyed by writing or by painting. Only the camera catches it. Standing outside the ropes and listening to the same old story and watching the same commonplace antics of Punch, Judy, the policeman, the thief, the soldier, the maidservant, the butcher's boy, and the pawnbroker, I wonder to myself how and why it amuses for six or seven years, certainly for four or five. Perhaps variety is not the spice of life with children. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. One has only to look at the children's faces and listen to their laughter to realize that Punch and Judy and the others are "delivering the goods." Titine is in her fifth guignol year, and still comes for sous. Mimi is just starting, and her eyes brighten, and her laugh rings out to prove that it works, and is working, with the thousands of Titines and Lloyds and Mimis who give their sous to the man with the drum.

With other fond parents, the girl and I

were standing for the several hundredth time (I ought to begin to be saying the thousandth now) outside the ropes.

"How do they get away with it?" I asked the girl. "Day in and day out, year in and year out, generation in and generation out, how do they find enough change of topic to interest the same clientele?"

The girl looked at me with amused tol

erance.

"You write a newspaper article every day," she said. "How do you get away with it? Why do your readers stand for it? There are only seven keys on the piano, and yet all the music in the world has come from them. It is a question of permutations and commutations-endless, just as in algebra."

Now we make for the grand bassin, where the greatest sport of all is awaiting us. As we pass under the trees to reach the steps, the girl and I look with interest at the clever croquet the old men are playing. We must stop a minute to watch some of the strokes. It is as skilful as billiards, this game, and nowhere can you

Since the war began, however, there is an important exception in Paris to this axiom of child psychology. The children have taken the soldiers into their world. So it is that, when we go down the steps to the grand bassin, the two soldiers on guard in front of the palais are spied.

"Voilà les sentinelles!" cries Titine, Lloyd salutes, Mimi yells, "Soldats! soldats! Là, Maman! Là, Papa!" Standing rigidly by their guérites, with fixed bayonets gleaming in the sun, their presence contrasts strangely with the background of flowers and the foreground of hooprolling girls and boat-sailing boys. They have always been in front of the Palais du Sénat, but now they seem different in their habitual setting. Their immobility, their very presence here, is unreal. How can valid men be spared from what we call "out there," fighting for France?

I had not intended to speak of the war. One always resolves, when he writes, to forget the war. But even in the Luxembourg, when you are with, and engrossed in, the children, the war enters, for it is

an essential factor in our life. It is our war. We cannot rid ourselves of the thought of it, of the burden of it. The children accept it, and, as with all the serious things of life, incorporate the war in their play.

Boats there are in the grand bassin, all sorts and conditions of them, just as one always finds them on a good afternoon when the wind is blowing gently. And eager faces are gazing intently from the stone coping. But the game is different in these days of war. Yachts are no longer sailing for a prize. Battle-ships are going out after the enemy. sided, however, as few boys are willing to sacrifice themselves for the common good by having their boats fly an enemy flag. In the grand bassin the German flag is as scarce to-day as it is in the North Sea.

The hunt is one

If physical activity be a criterion, the grandfather who boasts of having rented boats to men to-day admirals in the Mediterranean and members of the cabinet is still good for another twenty years. When Lloyd goes to choose his boat in the fascinating shipyard, I often chat with the ship-owner. He never fails to tell one that he stopped growing old when he reached sixty. To-day he asked his new joke (new, since he has been repeating it for only fifteen months, while the joke before the war had been tried for fifteen years).

"Let me see, you want a German boat, is it not?" he asks, bending over with a toothless grin.

"No!" shouts Lloyd, tense almost to tears. "The Germans are "

Why repeat it all? I try to remain cosmopolitan and to call myself a neutral, but my son is neither cosmopolitan nor neutral. The letter of boats nods approvingly, and pats the boy on the back. Lloyd, mollified, admonishes him with a "Pas de blague!" For a franc Lloyd gets a boat. big enough to require papa's assistance.

From naval warfare we turn to join the army. The donkeys, drawing empty carts, shake their heads mournfully. They do not understand their loss of popularity, which, I find, is due to their exploiter's

lack of appreciation of psychology. Early in the war the children saw that the donkey-man would stand for no nonsense. He did not want his carts used as ambulances, dragged around after the advancing battle-line; so, save on Sundays, his pickings are poor. He would gladly be a good sport now, but the children have boycotted him. He is even suspected of being a Boche.

We climb the steps of the parterre, and walk along the alleys of the Observatoire on our homeward way. Everywhere the children have organized themselves into armies. Big trees are fortresses. It is possible, even inside the iron gates, to storm redoubts and trenches. For workmen have been laying a gas-main from the rue de Vaugirard to the Boul' Miche'. Mercifully they are doing it slowly. The opportunity is splendid; real trenches are at hand.

Near the upper gate a group of older boys (older means from ten to thirteen) are gathered around a veteran of 1870, who, tracing the battle-field with a cane in the sand, explains the campaign in the Argonne. Another veteran drills seriously every day the younger boys from the Lycée Montaigne. Convalescent soldiers join in the training of the next generation.

Girls have their prominent and essential place in the play armies. The wee women of France are not shelved by the masculine sex. Equality begins in the nursery. Jumping-ropes and hoops have been laid aside for happier days. Even diabolo is losing ground. Tennis-rackets gather dust on the upper shelf of the hall closet. Dolls are wounded soldiers, and doll-carriages, if used at all, are ambulances. Like their older sisters, the little girls of the Luxembourg have enlisted for Red Cross duty, and follow the armies to give first aid on the battle-field. Park benches are improvised hospitals. Set forth on them, bottles, cotton, and bandages show their stern reality of the play. The nurses wear the regulation headgear, with the cross upon the forehead. Smaller boys, who can be bossed, are impressed into service as stretcher-bearers.

The children reflect the spirit of the nation and the work of the nation. The war has first place in the minds of all, it has first place in the efforts of all. Is not play at its best an imitation of what the grownups are thinking and doing?

And in the Luxembourg the other side of the war is revealed to one at every turn. War means glory and immortality only to poets and orators; to the rest of the world it means suffering and death. I am reluctant to go with my children to the Luxembourg these days, for it seems like flaunting my immunity in the face of everybody. Other fathers are at the war -or are not. Children's guardians are grandfathers. Black is the prevalent color in dresses.

Soldiers there are a-plenty. Some, vigorous and bronzed, are permissionaires, home on eight-days' furlough after a year in the trenches. How they treasure the precious moments with wife and babies! But by far the greater number in uniform are wounded and convalescents. In every allée one meets the maimed on crutches;