The candles have sputtered and burnt out, the tawdry tinsel is thrown aside for the soberer garb of the real, and Sir Francis Flatterer and Sir Randle Rackabite have passed into the ranks of everyday life. The laughter and mirth are but a memory, and we come back with a start to the daylight and the present, with its unfinished duties ever pressing for completion. And Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” lies open before us. From its pages arise, through the master’s art, the living forms of Sir Toby and Malvolio, Viola and the Duke. “Grave and gay, the lovers, the laughers, and the laughed-at, are made to harmonize in one scene and one common purpose.” We can well imagine that Twelfth Night in the Middle Temple in the days of the long ago, when the happy company of barristers and students gathered to hear for the first time, the drama fresh from the master’s hand, when its exquisite poetry charmed with new grace and melody the ear of some secluded scholar, and the antics of its revellers brought a smile even to the lips of that grave and formal dispenser of justice. One commentator tells us that the title was probably suggested by this, the first night of its performance, but do we not find a subtler significance in its embodiment of the spirit of the season? Is not the mirth and jest of those old-time sports and festivities aptly repeated here in this crowd of revelling, laughter-creating personages, in the drollery of Sir Toby Belch and his comrades, and the fantastical vanity of Malvolio? And as, in the midst of those old-time Twelfth Night revels, with their care-free abandon and joy, we catch now and then the sub-tone of the minor, and the richer harmonies of life, a mere glimpse of the simple love and faith of those lives of the long ago, so it is that we look past the boisterous merriment of these jesting revellers of the play to discern the true beauty of the characters who stand in the half-light behind. Then we become conscious of a quiet harmony of color and form, and we feel anew the poet’s close touch with life and nature. UNCLE ABRAHAM’S SERMON THE SEANCE By John Marshall Kelly Author of “The Resurrection,” “The Tempered Wind,” “The Christmas Tree,” etc. I’se be’n heahin’ some quare talk erbout yoah doin’s dis pas’ week an’ some yuther times, my heahers. I’se be’n telled erbout some uv dem _sayoncies_ you niggahs hev be’n holdin’, same’s lak dey do up tuh Kunnel Simpson’s house, an’ dat dar triflin’ yalleh house gal uv his’n an’ dat mottled yahd boy be’n lahnin’ you, my belubbed flock, de wiles uv de debbil an’ claimin’ dey’s meejums an’ claihvoyans, an’ hev be’n holpin’ you-alls talk wif spookses an’ hobgoblins an’ onfamiliar sperits.