Here we have a question of profound historic interest. Whence came the strange beast with the wide jaws? And here is where George Sand's pleasant paper is a very present help in time of need. She tells us that her son besought her to make a green monster for one of the earliest pieces he devised for her puppet-figures. She did as she was bid, and she sacrificed a pair of blue velvet slippers to provide the marvelous creature with his gently smiling jaws. She draws attention to the fact that the slippers were blue, and to the further fact that nevertheless the strange beast was always called the Green Monster. And here may be the explanation of the historic mystery. The fame of the puppets of Nohant was borne abroad; they were talked about all thru France; and they were discussed again and again in the Parisian newspapers. What more likely than that one of the professional puppet players should have seen the infinite possibilities of the Green Monster, and should have perceived its novel fascination for children? Thereupon he borrowed it for his own performances. Certainly it is that the Green Monster is a character in at least one of the manuscript plays preserved in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University, and written out half a century ago. Probably the Green Monster strayed from the puppet-show of the Champs-Elysées sooner or later to one of the toy stores of Paris at the request of some boy who desired it for his own. When the Green Monster had elected domicile in the stores of Paris, he was soon appropriated by the toy-makers of Germany for export to Great Britain and the United States. (1912.) XVII THE PUPPET-PLAY, PAST AND PRESENT THE PUPPET-PLAY, PAST AND PRESENT I