The National Amateur Press Association could hardly inaugurate a year of promised activity more auspiciously than it has by the sterling issue of its president's =Sprite=. It is just about everything that one could ask for in amateur journalism. The modest grey of the cover, the excellence of the paper stock, the flawlessness of the typography, the exquisite taste with which the component parts are blended--all these strike the eye at the first glance. When one comes to read the contents, he finds each contribution well worth the setting. For a leading article we have something that is well nigh unique in literature, either amateur or professional, an attempted reconstruction of a scene supposedly excised from "King Lear." This is so unusual, in fact, that it might well be called a "stunt," but certainly it is a successful stunt. In the not overly long scene presented, which pictures the ruthless hanging of Cordelia and the Fool before the eyes of the aged Lear, we can discern no quality that is not strictly Shakespearian. The language has been purged of every trace of modernism and flows with that semi-solemn, archaic, Elizabethan cadence that almost makes it hard to believe that it was written in this century. But all this might be done without achieving the supreme Shakespearian touch. The triumph of the scene is that the character delineation is carried on with such a mastery of its intricacies that this scene might be interpolated in a new edition of the play and fool the higher critics of the future. The author, Samuel Loveman, is an amateur of former days who celebrates his return to the hobby with this feat so characteristic of his peculiar genius. The United has its Lovecraft, a belated Georgian who says he is nowhere so much at home today as he would be in the coffee-houses of Pope or Johnson. The National once more after a lapse of years has its Loveman, a belated Elizabethan who could have walked into the Mermaid Tavern and proved a congenial soul to Kit Marlowe and friend Will. The United welcomes him back. Harry Martin, the editor, follows with an essay on the elements of the classic Greek tragedy to be found in "King Lear," which in depth, tone, and general literary quality are strongly reminiscent of the best work that appears in the =Atlantic Monthly=. As an essay it is perfect in form, its thesis is stated clearly and developed with forceful logic, and the wealth of material brought to bear upon the subject displays a knowledge of Shakespeare and the classic drama worthy of Truman Spencer, of beloved amateur memory.