The old laughter that had April in it. Now perhaps the chief reason for the dulness of modern plays is the somewhat exclusive attitude of the playwright. His appeal is no longer to the world. His appeal is to an audience. No breadth of range, no scope, is allowed to him. He has lost touch with the external forces of daily life. An introspective study, an allegory of the state of his own mind, is the most we can look for from him. But in Mr. Jack B. Yeats we recognise the makings of a dramatist of an older order; a writer of plays that are written in the intimate speech of the folk-ballad. While his contemporaries argue, wrangle and disagree as to what is music, and what is the best music, and what music saves a man's soul, he, like the hero Finn, is content with the best of all music-- The music of the thing that happens. His play of '_The Treasure of the Garden_' carries on a tradition that shook the stage before playwrights became self-conscious and before poets aimed to please the high foreheads in the stalls. There is no mental dyspepsia in his characters. They present no problem. Their aim is to be real. To be glad and sorry for a little while on a miniature stage measuring a foot across."--_Academy, 14/3/03._ PUBLISHED AND SOLD BY ELKIN MATHEWS, VIGO STREET, LONDON. * * * * * [Illustration: _ELKIN MATHEWS_] * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Added table of contents. Underscores are used to represent _italics_. Converted asterisms to asterisks for text edition. Added missing open quote before "Debauched by sixpenny and even threepenny editions" in James Flaunty advertisement. Also reformatted Manchester Guardian attribution to include em-dash for consistency with other quotation attributions. Changed some double quotes to single quotes in the final quotation of the James Flaunty advertisement for more appropriate quote nesting. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Little Fleet, by Jack B. Yeats