And all the while Selina and Charlotte were busy stuffing Edward’s rabbits with unwonted forage, bilious and green; polishing up the cage of his mice till the occupants raved and swore like householders in spring-time; and collecting materials for new bows and arrows, whips, boats, guns, and four-in-hand harness, against the return of Ulysses. Little did they dream that the hero, once back from Troy and all its onsets, would scornfully condemn their clumsy but laborious armoury as rot and humbug and only fit for kids! This, with many another like awakening, was mercifully hidden from them. Could the veil have been lifted, and the girls permitted to see Edward as he would appear a short three months hence, ragged of attire and lawless of tongue, a scorner of tradition and an adept in strange new physical tortures, one who would in the same half-hour dismember a doll and shatter a hallowed belief,—in fine, a sort of swaggering Captain, fresh from the Spanish Main,—could they have had the least hint of this, well, then perhaps——. But which of us is of mental fibre to stand the test of a glimpse into futurity? Let us only hope that, even with certain disillusionment ahead, the girls would have acted precisely as they did. And perhaps we have reason to be very grateful that, both as children and long afterwards, we are never allowed to guess how the absorbing pursuit of the moment will appear not only to others but to ourselves, a very short time hence. So we pass, with a gusto and a heartiness that to an onlooker would seem almost pathetic, from one droll devotion to another misshapen passion; and who shall dare to play Rhadamanthus, to appraise the record, and to decide how much of it is solid achievement, and how much the merest child’s play? [Illustration] _BOOKS BY KENNETH GRAHAME_ THE GOLDEN AGE 16mo. $1.00 net. Twenty-third Edition. THE GOLDEN AGE An Illustrated Edition, set in old-faced type, with 18 full-page Photogravures, Title-page, Tail-pieces, and Cover-design by Maxfield Parrish. Sq. 8vo. $2.50 net. _New York Times Saturday Review._—‘The new illustrated edition of “The Golden Age” is published now because the ordinary half-tone process applied to Maxfield Parrish’s charming drawings, when the book was first illustrated, did not do justice to the artist’s work. The original drawings, which had been sold to many purchasers, were hunted up, and they have here been reproduced by photogravure. No artist ever caught the spirit of an author more surely than Maxfield Parrish has caught that of the staid Secretary of the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, who in his leisure hours writes these exquisite memories of childhood.’