article upon Immigration in the October number of your magazine, I received your letter of the 22d instant relating to the same. This article has profoundly impressed me as one of the most thoughtful and illuminating discussions of the subject that it has been my pleasure to encounter. His vivid style and thorough knowledge of the subject should make this series of articles a most valuable contribution to one of the most important of all subjects of present popular interest, and I am looking forward to future issues of your magazine containing additional articles from Prof. Ross's pen with much interest."

The comment of the Senator quoted above is typical of many that have been made on Prof. Ross's remarkable papers. The Boston Transcript says, in discussing these articles and others in THE CENTURY upon equally important topics, "When the example thus set. by THE CENTURY takes effect the editors of the magazines will realize that milk-and-water will no more nourish large circulations than the human apparatus. There is a political use and function for magazines higher and more valuable than the 'exposure' sensation."

After the holiday season, color has a way of fading out of magazines; even black-and-white illustrations become scarce. THE CENTURY is an exception in February magazines. stead of being relatively bleak and colorless, it blossoms like the rose. For instance, pictures in tint by Charles S. Chapman decorate Mr. Long's Japanese story. Anna Whelan Betts has painted a full-page "Valentine Fantasy" which is reproduced in full colors. There are four remarkable art photographs of old-time Mexico reproduced in tint. Several photographs by Arnold Genthe illustrate Percy Mackaye's masque "Sanctuary." A scene in Benares to illustrate Benson's "The Heart of India" is reproduced in CENTURY

colortone. "Her First Dance" is a drawing, reproduced in tint, by E. M. Ashe. An example of the work of the French sculptor Emile Antoine Bourdelle is shown-a bust of Rembrandt.

A beautiful painting made in 1882 for THE CENTURY by George Inness is reproduced in colortone. It is called "Under the Greenwood."

"Sanctuary," the masque of birds, which was written by Percy Mackaye and produced at Windsor, Vermont, last summer, played by the daughter of President Wilson and a number of poets and artists, will be printed for the first time in the February CENTURY.

Melvin A. Hall, the author of "Motoring in Japan," the charming article that appeared in the November CENTURY, sends a posta card from "68° 27' N. L., 197 miles north o the Arctic Circle and end of the northernmost road in the world." He says: "Farthest north ever reached by motor-car. Spent last night in Lapp camp surrounded by 250 reindeer.' Another friendly letter comes from near the equator. Mr. Harry A. Franck, author of "A Vagabond Journey Around the World' and "Zone Policeman 88," writes, from the wilds of Peru, a cheerful letter describing some of his most recent adventures, in which he says:

"I clawed up and down among cactus and wild asses the rest of the day and finally stretched my frame on some 2 x 5 feet o cleared ground in the jungle. Along the mid dle of next afternoon, after dragging mysel up and down most of the mountains and preci pices in the vicinity, I at length discovered ar Indian and a trail some 7 inches wide and go a stew of guinea-pig."

"In Lighter Vein" has printed of late sc much good art and sound, though humorous comment on life, and has shown such marked vitality, that an experienced friend of THE CENTURY suggested that "In Lighter Vein" is strong and lively enough to shift for itself in the crowded field of magazines. But THE CENTURY prefers to keep the child at home enfant terrible though he be!

THE CENTURION.

I

HAVE known many collectors of celebrities, but none of them have been a patch on Mrs. Folyat-Raikes.

She was an old friend of my mother's; that was how I came to know her. I may have made it a little too apparent that it was filial piety that brought me to Cadogan Gardens, for she put me in my place at once by assuring me that I should always be welcome there for my dear mother's sake. If I had any illusions as to my footing, she destroyed them by the little air of mournful affection that explained. my obscure presence, and condoned it. That was one of the ways by which she maintained her unspeakable prestige.

Yet I happened to know that she had inquired into my activities sufficiently to assure herself that I might ultimately have value. She was an infallible appraiser of values; she had the instinct of the auctionroom, and I do not think that in a lifetime of collecting she had ever wasted as much as one "At Home" card.

She had been at the game for years when I first met her, so I can't tell you much about her beginnings, except that she was a daughter of Lord Braintree, and the widow of a man who had distinguished himself in the diplomatic service, which may have helped her.

Her success began in the early eighties, when going straight, with her flair, for the rarest, she secured Ford Lankester. He never could resist a woman if she was young, well born, and handsome, and when the daughter of Lord Braintree held out the laurels, he stooped his head and played very prettily at being crowned. After that, collecting became easy. She had only to write on her card, "To meet Mr. Ford Lankester," and she filled her big drawing-room in Cadogan Gardens. At one time she was said to have the finest collection in London. Only ten years ago everybody who was somebody was sure to be seen in it; not to be seen argued that you were nobody. Thus you were fairly terrorized into being seen. Even now,

when most celebrities are smaller and the few big ones are getting shy, by dint of playing off one against the other she continues to collect.

But she is not so young as she was, nor yet so handsome, and other hostesses are in the business; she knows that one or two of the younger men-Grevill Burton, for instance-will not be seen inside her house, and she is getting nervous.

That is why her last adventure, the hunting of Watt Gunn, became the violent, disastrous, yet exciting spectacle it was.

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In the beginning she had no trouble in getting hold of him; it was far easier than her first triumph, the capture of Ford Lankester. As you know, Watt Gunn's greatness dropped on him suddenly, after he had been toiling for eight years in obscurity. Nobody, he said, was more surprised at it than himself. For eight years he had been writing things every bit as good as "The New Aspasia" without getting himself discovered. He was the son of a little draper at Surbiton, and had worked for eight years as his father's cashier. He used to say mournfully that he supposed his "grand mistake" was not going in for journalism. It was n't his grand mistake; it was his grand distinction, his superhuman luck. It kept him turning out one masterpiece after another, all fresh, with the dew on them, at an age when the talent of most novelists begins to turn gray. It kept him pure from any ulterior motive. Above all, it kept him from the clutches of the collector.

But it had this disadvantage, that when he did emerge, he emerged in a state of utter innocence, as naked of, sophistication as when he was born. He had no suspicion of the dangers that lurked for him in Mrs. Folyat-Raikes's drawing-room. He did n't know that there were two kinds of celebrities, those who were too small to be asked there, and those who were too big to go. There was nobody to tell him that he was much too big. He went because he understood that he would meet the sort of people he had wanted all his life to meet.

He met first of all Furnival and me. It was touching how from the very first, and afterward in his extremity, he clung to us. Positively, it was as if then, before he had lost his crystalline simplicity, he had had some premonition of disaster, and felt subconsciously that we might save him. But it went, that pure and savage sense of his, in his first year.

I can see him now, sitting beside Mrs. Folyat-Raikes at the head of her beautiful mahogany table, always impeccably dressed, bright eyed, and a little flushed. I can see his hair, -he had never trained it, which rose irrepressibly in a crest or comb from back to front along the top of his head, and his innocent mustache, which drooped as if it deprecated the behavior of his hair. I can see his shy, untutored

courtliness, his jerky aplomb, his little humorous, interrogative air, which seemed to say, "I'm carrying it off pretty well for a chap that is n't used to it-my greatness, eh?" I seem to hear his guileless intonations; I follow, fascinated, the noble, reckless rush of his aitches as they fell through space; I taste the strange and piercing flavor of the accents that were his. It seemed to me horrible, inconceivable, that he liked being there. And yet there can be no doubt that he did like it just at first. It gave him the things that he had missed, the opportunities. It satisfied his everlasting curiosity as to contemporary manners and the social scene. And just at first it did n't hurt him. He continued to produce, with a humor and a freshness unimpaired, those inimitable annals of his class.

In his second year Watt Gunn had made his way everywhere. He did n't push. He was so frightfully celebrated that he had no need to. He was pushed. The mass bore down on him. Competition had set in. All the collectors in the western and southwestern districts contended with Mrs. Folyat-Raikes for the possession of Watt Gunn. But she held her own, for he was grateful to her. You saw her sweep by, haggard with pursuit, but trailing Watt Gunn on the edge of her sagging, voluminous, Victorian gowns.

It was pitiful to watch the gradual sophistication of the naïf creature, his polishing and hardening under the social impact, and the blunting of his profound. and primal instincts. They clipped his wings, among them, and the wings of his wild aitches. Very soon he lost his shyness and his tingling cockney flavor.

Presently his work began to suffer. It was becoming more brilliant, more astoundingly intellectual, but the dewiness and the divine simplicity were going.

We, Grevill Burton, Furnival, and I, told him so.

He knew it, and he knew the cause of it, but he defended himself. When we said, "For God's sake, keep out of it!" he said he could n't.

"I want," he said, "to get the hang of the thing. If I 'm going to draw the upper classes, I must see what they 're like. I can't invent 'em. Who could?"

And when Furny told him for his good that he was a snob at bottom, he merely said: "Of course I am. Who is n't?"