author and the book to have been snatched from us? Lady Augusta wrote me that she had done all she could and that poor Lord Dorimont, who had really been worried to death, was extremely sorry. I couldn't have the matter out with Mrs. Wimbush, for I didn't want to be taunted by her with desiring to aggrandise myself by a public connection with Mr. Paraday's sweepings. She had signified her willingness to meet the expense of all advertising, as indeed she was always ready to do. The last night of the horrible series, the night before he died, I put my ear closer to his pillow. "That thing I read you that morning, you know." "In your garden--that dreadful day? Yes!" "Won't it do as it is?" "It would have been a glorious book." "It _is_ a glorious book," Neil Paraday murmured. "Print it as it stands--beautifully." "Beautifully!" I passionately promised. It may be imagined whether, now that he has gone, the promise seems to me less sacred. I am convinced that if such pages had appeared in his lifetime the Abbey would hold him to-day. I have kept the advertising in my own hands, but the manuscript has not been recovered. It's impossible, and at any rate intolerable, to suppose it can have been wantonly destroyed. Perhaps some chance blundering hand, some brutal ignorance has lighted kitchen-fires with it. Every stupid and hideous accident haunts my meditations. My undiscourageable search for the lost treasure would make a long chapter. Fortunately I have a devoted associate in the person of a young lady who has every day a fresh indignation and a fresh idea and who maintains with intensity that the prize will still turn up. Sometimes I believe her, but I have quite ceased to believe myself. The only thing for us, at all events, is to go on seeking and hoping together; and we should be closely united by this firm tie even were we not at present by another. L'Education Sentimentale By Aubrey Beardsley _Reproduced by the Swan Electric Engraving Company_ [Illustration: L'Education Sentimentale] Tree-Worship By Richard Le Gallienne Vast and mysterious brother, ere was yet of me So much as men may poise upon a needle's end, Still shook with laughter all this monstrous might of thee, And still with haughty crest it called the morning friend. Thy latticed column jetted up the bright blue air, Tall as a mast it was, and stronger than a tower; Three hundred winters had beheld thee mighty there, Before my little life had lived one little hour. With rocky foot stern-set like iron in the land, With leafy rustling crest the morning sows with pearls, Huge as a minster, half in heaven men saw thee stand, Thy rugged girth the waists of fifty Eastern girls.