circumstances, there would be no abatement of taxes. Especially severe should be the schedules in cases where long words were used when shorter ones would serve as well. That is, if any one should speak of etiolation or rubescence when he merely meant the state of being white or red, the excise would be heavy. In other terms, if a word had only the fault of length, a reasonably moderate specific duty would be imposed; but if a long word were employed where a short one might have been, the culprit would be subject to an ad valorem tax, the amount to depend on the gravity of the offense. Thus the person who makes it his rule never to use a short word if a long one will do as well would have to pay for his preference, just as he has had to pay for his preference for an English greatcoat.

The range for such a tariff schedule is indeed broad. Its possibilities touch more than the mere matter of length. Trite and hackneyed words and phrases should certainly not be on the free list, and more stringent regulation than mere taxation would be advisable in some cases. The journalist who describes a person as cleancut, strenuous, temperamental, or well groomed, might be given a few days in a cell to ponder on possible synonyms, and the same rule would apply to critics who find indispensable such words as significant, suggestive, gripping, artistry, obsession, and the indefinable something. Nor would the political orator be allowed to point with pride or view with alarm. In extreme cases, as where any one used such words as virile, enthuse, humans, or quite some, hard labor or solitary confinement would be the only possible verdict.

Or recourse might be made to that grand old Gilbertian rule of making the punishment fit the crime. Thus any humorist who attempted to raise a laugh by speaking of Art with a capital A might be made, after the fashion of school discipline, to write out the word Art with the afore-mentioned capital two or three thousand times. As for the dramatic critic who declares that any play has, or lacks, the punch, why not let him attend that same play every night for, say, a month?

There ought not, however, to be any distinction against journalism and in favor of fiction and poetry. Take the case of the novelist and his methods. Sup

pose, instead of saying, "She wondered why he was silent," the novelist wrote: "Whether the man's inherent predilection to ratiocinative meditation had gripped him, whether it was merely the instinctive armor of taciturnity in which the masculine ego, feeling itself worsted, often arrays itself, or whether he was stung into a wordless impotency of embarrassment, and perhaps a sentimental embarrassment, by the proximity of her presence-such were the subliminal queries which thrust themselves, with a thousand nuances of interrogative emphasis, against the exquisite sensitivity of her feminine, perhaps all too feminine, curiosity, dominantly, ineluctably."

Any author who chose to write thus ought to be forced to pay for the privilege. So, too, ought the one who writes as follows, paragraphing each sentence separately:

"Why are you silent?" asked she.

"Don't you like silent people?" he parried.

"That depends," she returned.
"On what?"

"Can't you guess?"

"Would you like me to try?" he queried.

This time it was she who was silent. In her eyes beckoned a mocking challenge, -and her face was close to his; so very close that

"Oh!" she cried; and again, “Oh!" But her voice was throbbing more with triumph than with indignation. He released her.

"You see, silent people are often the most dangerous!" he laughed.

And so on ad infinitum and ad nauseam. Whether the first novelist or this one should be taxed more heavily would be at question for the experts to pass on. Probably a pro rata tax depending on the author's sales would be the fairest plan.

Obviously, other practices beside length of words and brevity of paragraphs would need attention. All manner of affectations and gallery plays would be dealt with severely in the short story as well as in the novel. There would be no mercy for the author who indicates that some one is speaking by saying: "gurgled she," "shot he," "blushed she," "hesitated the boy," "twinkled the débutante," "straw-grasped the culprit," "antipho

naled the pair." Yet for years, while the tariff on wool has been condemned up hill and down dale, such verbal practices have gone unregulated.

In the case of poetry alone taxes might be levied heavy enough, though just, more than to equal present rates on paper, ink, and type-writers. Perhaps it would be most feasible to have poets registered and licensed, as dogs are nowadays. Specific rulings would also obtain. If poet "Series B, No. 27,381," wished to exceed the annual limit of three spring poems, he would have to pay a small fee. And for overusage of certain words, such as o'er, glades, babble, verdant, skyey (Shelley, or is it Keats? notwithstanding), lap of spring, and countless more, there would be fitting tariff exactions. As for poets who maltreat their lines, standing them on their heads, after the manner of Chinese torture, in order to get a rhyming word in the right place, they also would suffer for such criminal practices. Likewise poets who invariably eschew all meter, apparently regarding poetry, to quote the old salt, as prose with "its loose ends all to starboard." Moreover, the people, if they are real people at all, who write the words to popular songs should not escape a heavy fine when they rhyme baby and lady, kiss and wish, or when they lead into the chorus with the line, "And thus

to

{him } did say."

It is possible to run on with case after case needing reform. Any one can see for himself how a tariff analogous to the one so long in operation might be placed upon foreign words and phrases incessantly and needlessly interlarding a passage of English. Slang could be controlled in the same way, although it would be manifestly unfair to deal as harshly with what springs from impulse as with that which is due to the complacency of long usage. Bad grammar and unpardonable pronunciation might be regulated and bettered by the same means. We should then have the almost unbelievably hopeful spectacle of the National Government. working in conjunction with organized education throughout the land.

At this point I can hear the reader murmuring to himself: "All very pretty, but

how does he purpose to carry out such reform practically? How can he detect violations and assess the taxes?" Nevertheless, I am convinced that such a tariff could be put into practical execution. The thinking portion of the public would see the beauty of the scheme and would cooperate. A majority would strive to curtail the offending products of their tongues and pens. and pens. Many an author and public speaker, with a sufficient income, would come forward stoutly to "declare" whatever dutiable wares he was about to offer to the public. Of course there would be some attempted smuggling. This would have to be checked as all smuggling is. The Government would be forced to employ a vast corps of officials to enforce its excises. Some would read indefatigably, going through books and newspapers as the custom-house satrap to-day goes through one's trunk on the pier. Others would work after the fashion of a plainclothes force, haunting churches and public meetings, street corners, hotel lobbies, afternoon teas; in fact, every spot where people talk. All this would require time and patience. But the difficulties are mechanical rather than fundamental.

And picture to yourself the results. First of all, the nation's treasury would be full to overflowing. All public institutions would share the profits. Bad grammar would finance new schools and colleges. Slang would found libraries. By itself, the word virile would help endow a national museum. Spring poetry would amply finance the printing and distribution of agricultural literature. The split infinitive would help to organize municipal theaters. And will and shall alone would pay for a national highway across the continent. All the while public taste and intelligence would grow. Cultivation would increase a thousandfold as soon as it began to cost money to be uncultivated; for not only is it true that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, but it is equally indisputable that the way to his brain is through his pocket. Can any sane person for an instant doubt the ultimate result if the tariff and the thinking public began thus, hand in hand, to work strenuously in such an uplift movement for the higher good?

Tand landing our car at Kobe was

HE process of unloading, lightering,

made rather less complicated by the courtesy of the Japanese customs officials. When the landing agent finally departed with a basket and both arms full of papers, to which the last stamp, the last signature, and the final bit of tape, had been affixed, I drove away from the dock between lines of officials in white uniforms, who saluted, and swung open the custom-house doors.

After a few days' preliminary touring to the west and north, we departed upcountry early one afternoon with such little information as I had been able to obtain, none of it particularly assuring. While we were at tiffin, the motor, filled with luggage, had been left blocking the street outside. Upon coming out we found

it surrounded by about a third of the population of Kobe, exploring it inside and out, and striving desperately with one another for more intimate views. Forcing my way through the mob and into the car, I stepped on the muffler cut-out and started the engine on the spark. The unexpected roar of an open exhaust cleared a short space in front, and I drove cautiously away, while the outer layers of humanity, clinging to running-boards and luggagerack, were gradually shaken off, with shrieks of laughter. With the pack in full chase behind, making the narrow streets reëcho with the noise of their wooden clogs, we crept through the town, dodging rickshaw, confused pedestrians of both sexes, toddling babies, and more or less casually placed telegraph-poles.