But better than any fairy-stories were the stories that he told us of our own lives, which under his touch became the wonderful adventures which they really were. He showed us that it was marvellous to get out of bed in the morning, and marvellous to get into bed at night. He made us realise the imaginative value of common things, and the fun that could be derived even from the performance of duties, by aid of a little make-believe. The grown-up folk would probably have derided his system, but he made us tolerate our lessons, and endure the pangs of toothache with some degree of fortitude. He had a short way with the ugly bogies with which thoughtless nurses and chance echoes from the horrors columns of newspapers had peopled the shadows of our life. We were no longer afraid of the dark when he had told us how friendly it could be to the distressed. Hitherto we had vainly sought to find the colours and sounds of romance in life, and, failing, had been tempted to sum up the whole business as tedious. After he had shown us how to do it, it was easy to see that life itself was a story as romantic as we cared to make it. Our daily official walks became gallant expeditions, and we approached arithmetic with a flaming sword. Can any childhood ever have known a greater wizard than this? And yet since that state does not endure for ever, it must surely have happened to us to seek for straws in his towering head once too often, had not death taken our kindly enchanter from our company, and thus spared us the bitter discovery that the one man who reconciled us to life was considered rather more than eccentric by an obtuse world. It is true that we noticed that the grown-up people were apt to treat him sometimes as if he were one of us, but we felt that he merited this distinction, and did not find it strange. Nor did we wonder that he should tell stories aloud to himself lacking a wider audience, for we knew that if we had the power we should tell such stories to ourselves all day long. We did not only fail to realise that he was mad; we knew that he was the only reasonable creature of adult years who ever came near us. He understood us and paid us the supreme compliment of allowing us to understand him. The world called him fantastic for actions that convinced us that he was wise, and, thanks to a fate that seemed at the time insensately cruel, the spell was never broken. ADMIRALS ALL