Outside the sun was shining. There was no hole anywhere to be seen. And the woman looked up, and lo! there was God laughing at her. Then said the woman: 'There is no hole.' And God gaily answered, 'No.' Then the woman asked: 'Where is Hell?' And God, very much amused, replied: 'I haven't the least idea!' And the woman smiled right joyously, and said: 'I have had bad Dreams.' And God said: 'You have!' * * * * * The sunlight lay across the bed of the woman from South Africa. She woke, and thought of the deep red hole she had seen. And she reflected on her strange meeting with X. Y. Z. of the _Athenæum_, and the 'Religious Spirit' of the _Pall Mall_. And she also thought what a playful and hilarious personage God was. Then she remembered she had had late supper the previous evening. Which accounted for 'Dreams.' * * * * * The sunlight still lies now and then across the bed of the woman from South Africa. It is a way the sunlight has. And God laughs, as well He may." Now I hope everybody sees what a "touching simplicity" there is, what a child-like familiarity with the Deity pervades the whole of this "prose poem." And yet there is a "subtlety," a candour, a strange melancholy, a curious cynicism, and a weirdness of conception and strong picturesqueness about its every line. It is unique in itself; it wants no explanation, because it says everything in the fewest words. It has a diction as innocent and unadorned as that of an infant's first spelling-book. And all the best critics I know want authors to let "brevity be the soul of wit," and to tell their stories as concisely as possible. If I were a novel-maker and wished to please the critics, I should write my "thrillers" in telegram form; twelve or twenty-four words to a chapter. Then I am sure I should get very well reviewed. Critics have no time to read any thoroughly finished and careful work--they seldom can do more than scan the first page and the last. I know this, being a Critic myself, and I think it is a thousand pities authors should take any trouble to write a middle part to their stories. An Ollendorf curtness of wording is always desirable, unless, indeed, one happens to be a George Meredith, and can manage to get cleverly involved in a long sentence which takes time to decipher, and when deciphered has literally no meaning at all. Then of course one is a genius at once; but such masterly art is rare. And so on the whole I like the "allegory" style best, because it is both brief and obscure at the same time. It has the surface appearance of simplicity, but its depth--ah! it is surprising to what a depth you can go in an allegory. You can fall down a regular well of thought and go fast asleep at the bottom, and when you wake up you wonder what it was all about,