It will be understood that by that time we had come to rely on the grown-up people for assistance in producing plays, and we had substituted their perverted adult taste for our juvenile conceptions of drama. The old plays, with their homely characters and dignified simplicity of setting, no longer pleased us. We craved for a debauch of Paul Clifford, and every new production had to be more elaborate in its insentient mimicry of life than the one before. The inevitable happened. The more our stage-setting approximated to Nature, and the more Paul pirouetted in the limelight, the less we attained to that illusion which had been so easy to achieve on a packing-case stage with two little coloured candles for footlights. There came a day when Paul no longer interested us, and we felt that we had exhausted the possibilities of the sensational. The theatre was closed, and when, many months afterwards, a vague curiosity led us to ask what had become of it, we learnt with but little regret that our elders had given it away to some little boy whose taste in drama was as yet unsophisticated. I wonder what he made of our real sea and our practicable fountains! Not very long ago I was turning over some old books, when a small piece of cardboard slipped from between the pages and fell to the ground. It was in the likeness of a man, a man dressed in riding-boots and yellow satin; yet it was some moments before I realised that I was in the presence of the once great Paul Clifford. With recognition came something like remorse. It was no more than just to forgive his faults after so many years, and he really was a very good actor until an excess of praise turned his little pasteboard head. I looked round the library, and after due consideration took a volume of the Laureate’s poems from the shelves, and laid the tired highwayman to rest between its pages. “Sleep on, brave Paul!” I said softly. “No one will ever disturb you there.” And now I have written his epitaph. CHILDREN AND THE SPRING POETS and careless, happy fellows like that may say what they like for the spring, but there are only two seasons in the year for children. The parties of Christmas appealed to our senses in a hundred pleasant ways. They shone with Jack Frost and Chinese lanterns and the gay gelatine from crackers; they compressed our limbs in the pride of new, uncomfortable suits and tight, shiny shoes; they tasted of burnt raisins and orange jelly; they sang with frosty carols and sensible tunes and the agreeable din of penny musical instruments; they smelt of Christmas-tree candles and tangerine oranges. Then there were pantomimes and large silver pieces from the pockets of millionaire uncles, and if all else failed, the possibility of snow. Certainly there was nothing the matter with winter.