thoughtfully. Then, relaxing into his old merry smile, he continued: "As I was about to remark, Chingachgook, when I was interrupted, you are a good little guesser when it comes to picking out French encampments and such like. Hope you'll pardon my haste in coming over to collect the bet." 66 'Bunny, I've got a confession to make. When I believed we were wrecked inside my lines, I intended seeing that you were comfortably quartered with us for the balance of the war-simply to keep you out of further danger. You have been twice as generous to me. I didn't see it then, but I didn't dream then of our positions being reversed. Now I see what a fool I was to think of your being contented-a prisoner. "And now," I went on," the question with me is, should I accept your generosity and go back to fight for my side when I didn't consider doing that for you "Here, Arnold, drop that !" interrupted Reinhardt, swinging round and facing me. "We're even, you and I, if you insist upon computing obligations. Our countries are even too. You've given me back to my country-twice. Perhaps I'm taking the law into my own hands, but I am not cur enough to accept such a favor from France without returning it if I can. You go back as soon as you can get back, and good luck to you! If Domaz- "He ought to go to the hospital," said Bunny. "Leave that to me. I'll see he gets there. And they will never let him get back to his command. Even if he did, Reinhardt, nobody would believe his preposterous story about you. You will be away. Months will have passed. He hasn't a bit of proof. No one else saw me there. My machine is there-yes. But a pilot may fall out and land ten miles away from where his airplane struck. Domaz is more apt to be court-martialed for this absence without leave." I paused, with a grin of satisfaction. Bunny pressed my knee. "Here comes old Frederick with the tray," he said. “By Jove, I believe you are right!" As we swallowed our cafe au lait and scrambled eggs we acquainted Frederick with our day's experiences. He listened incredulously at first, then exhibited utter disbelief, and this was pathetically mingled with symptoms of pain at our heartless chaffing. We burst into shouts of laughter ourselves, as we saw the old fellow's stubborn refusal to believe our story of the night airplane flight. He smiled appreciatively at that and begged us not to try any tricks on the old man. "You couldn't make me to believe you boys would fight against one another," he exclaimed, nodding sagely. "But how did you get here, now ?" Again we exhibited our Flying Service uniforms, our helmets, and even the insignia on our collars. "You can't make me believe M. Arnold is only a lieutenant and M. Reinhardt is a captain." We roared again. He shook his head. "But will the dear lads come up to the chalet and see the old woman? She would have a mocha cake in the cupboard this minute, most likely." Reinhardt jumped to his feet and took the old man by the coat lapels. "No, Frederick, no one must know you have seen us tonight. Understand?" The old man bowed gravely. "And there are several things you must do for us. It is now almost midnight. My airplane is under the trees at the far end of the old football field. You will see it yourself, and then you will believe me. Now we must have two things-a suit of clothes for Arnold and thirty gallons of petrol for me and we must have them within an hour." "The clothes for M. Arnold-yes; but the petrol-one cannot buy petrol in Switzerland since the war. It is now impossible. "Where can I steal it then, Frederick? I must have it!" said Reinhardt, throwing down some gold pieces. "I must be two hundred miles from here before daybreak. If any one should discover my machine there on the old school field, I will be interned. I must have petrol!" "The old school field," repeated the old man, shrewdly. "Perhaps now M. le Professeur has not locked his garage tonight. I will go immediately and examine." But Bunny and I were off the terrace, down the familiar old steps, and away into the quiet midnight streets of Verney before his speech was finished. 66 Get me a suit of clothes and meet us there," I shouted back as the old man stood staring after us in open-mouthed wonder from the top of the steps. "Can you make it, Bunny? It's only a hundred meters to the fence." I peered anxiously through the darkness ahead as I stood in front of the Gotha, two empty petrol cans in my hands. "Thanks. Ready?" "Let go her head, Chingachgook, good old Indian. Thanks for the tea. But I say, Arnold!" "Yes, old fellow." "Mind you leave that first cartridge out next time. Auf Wiedersehen.” I watched the airplane rise from the old football field and soar away into the night. I can't tell you, my dear Captain Pieron, what bitter pangs of sadness and melancholy choked me as I walked back alone through the dear familiar old school grounds. Every tree-trunk spoke eloquently of the happy days gone by when we were all playfellows there together. I sat down on the old bench by the tennis court and sobbed like a broken-hearted child. Captain Pieron was nearing the end of the letter that explained the mysterious disappearance of Adair. He read with straining eyes: A few hours later, as I was buying my ticket for Geneva in the railway station, I was arrested. I had telephoned the hos pital to send for the wretched Domaz, and when their ambulance arrived they found him dead! They immediately watched the trains and caught me neatly enough. As I was compelled to explain about the death of Domaz in order to escape a worse suspicion, which the Swiss military authorities had about me, I told them who I was and showed them my credentials. They interned me for the duration of the war at Visp. I foolishly tried twice to escape before I wrote you. Then they would not permit me to write again, and they kept me more or less closely confined. After six months' waiting I managed to get into Italy, but an unfortunate encounter with a sentry at the border nearly finished me. I was shot in the foot. The Italian doctors patched me up and put me on the boat for America the French officers authorized me to take a month's leave. Dear old Phil, you can imagine how eager I am for news of you! I am posting this letter at the Azores, where we touch. America, thank God, has entered the war, and soon there'll be thousands of our boys flying for France. I'll be back myself on the first boat. COLOR-BEARERS OF THE 308th INFANTRY IN THE FIRST FORMAL PARADE OF DRAFT SOLDIERS IN NEW YORK CITY Two thousand seven hundred men of the 308th Infantry marched down Fifth Avenue with firm step and soldierly bearing, on February 4, after five months of training at Camp Upton. The pride they felt in their appearance and discipline was reflected in the faces of the multitude of New Yorkers who applauded them as they passed. The feelings of the officers who had trained them were uttered in the words of General E. M. Johnson, division commander at Camp Upton: "I'm proud of these troops," he said, simply; "I'm proud of every one of them " The "sea soldiers" of America are said to have good voices as a rule and to enjoy using them in chorus singing. At the camp where this photograph was taken, somewhere in the United States," the men have a thirty-minute singing lesson every day. Both old favorites and present-day popular songs are taught to this great singing class 44 "H BY HERBERT VAUGHAN ABBOTT E [Keats] looked upon the medical career as the career by which to live in a workaday world, without being certain that he could keep up the strain of it. He nevertheless had a consciousness of his own powers. Poetry was the zenith of all his aspirations, the only thing worthy the attention of superior minds. The greatest men in the world were the poets, and to rank among them was the chief object of his ambition. It may readily be imagined that amongst mere medical students he would walk and talk as one of the gods might be supposed to do when mingling with mortals. This pride exposed him to occasional ridicule and some mortification." 66 Newmarsh or Newmarch (I forget which was his name) was a classical scholar, as was Keats, and therefore they scanned freely the respective merits of the poets of Greece and Rome. Whenever Keats showed Newmarch any of his poetry, it was sure to be ridiculed and severely handled. "Newmarch was a light-hearted and merry fellow, but I thought he was rather too fond of mortifying Keats, but more particularly his brothers, as their praise of their brother John amounted almost to idolatry, and Newmarch and they frequently quarreled." So, in substance, runs the testimony of Henry Stephens, medic at the united hospitals of St. Thomas's and Guy's. It casts a deal of light on the causes of Keats's troubled career. A teasable, captivating fellow, his gallantry of bearing rallied friends about him, who loved even his rashness and his blunders. But he piqued others, who were as young as he, or at least were eager to retain all the irresponsibilities of youth. In school his fellows had sometimes badgered him to see his eyes flash and his fists double for a fight according to the pugilist's code. And no sooner had he published than anonymous critics found such an exuberance in his verse as to invite hazing, and behind their masks cherished the illusion that they were engaged in the fun of true sportsmanship. His champions and his tormentors seem different enough, yet it is astonishing how much unanimity there was among them. Even his foes, if they may be called such, admitted that he was "a person of no ordinary genius;" even his most faithful friends recognized among themselves that his faults were " enough, indeed, to sink another writer." On one other point they were all of the same mind: John Keats was very young. Entranced with the freshness of every sensation, absorbed in every successive mood which possessed him, he stood on the threshold of life, with a daring as yet unschooled and undis ciplined, and with the uncertainties and fears essential to a state of mind which was inevitably compact of imaginations and speculations instead of experience and knowledge. He was eager for experiment, passionately ready to be the younger brother of the elder poets-Spenser, Shakespeare, Chapman-to whom language was a full-blooded, vivid thing, and poetry a bold and masculine utterance. Thirty years ago, Sir Sidney Colvin contributed a "Life of Keats" to the "English Men of Letters Series." It was a book of rare distinction, the lithe work of a man in his prime, and all the better tribute to its subject that it was written not only with sympathetic insight but with keen, unhampered discrimination and discretion. Its illuminating phrasing and the swift movement of its thought were worthy of the ardent ideals and temperament of the poet. What has resulted from Sir Sidney's later labors is of great value to the serious student of Keats. But these advantages are attended with some, perhaps inevitable, losses. The author now lingers a little with the air of one loth to leave his subject. At times he turns back to old material to recover a detail which the right instincts of his younger days had rejected as a clog to his narrative. At times the decisiveness and justness of his earlier judgments seem to startle him into not very significant phrases of qualification. And often, unconsciously sacrificing a little of the fine critical standards which will always be associ ated with his name, he now judges some inferior passages with an elder's indulgence rather than with that more exacting form of generosity which turns the light of a man's best achievements upon all his work and refuses to appraise it according to any lower criterion. Though the new biography richly supplements, these are some of the reasons why it cannot fully supersede, the old. To-day the same author issues a new life and critical study of Keats, at once more comprehensive and less choice. It examines somewhat exhaustively the sources in poetry, painting, and sculpture upon which Keats drew with so enthusiastic a discipleship. It puts new detail and fresh life into the portraits of those warm and honest friends with whose criticisms and encouragements he so indissolubly linked his art. And it revises the long-accepted chronology of his poems and reveals a clear and intelligible development, the result of persistent workmanship, and almost steadily progressive until his fatal illness came, and made him-the phrase is Keats's own-a mere fever of himself. 1 John Keats: His Life and Poetry, His Friends, Critics, and After-Fame. By Sir Sidney Colvin. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $4.50. 294 Sir Sidney seems to make more than in his younger days of Keats's groping after philosophies not fully his own. There were times of depression in the young poet's passionate and mercurial career when his instincts wavered, his workmanship weakened, and he lost his faith in the glorious self-sufficiency of youth. In the reflections of these despondent moods Sir Sidney sees some promise of future profundity. Perhaps he is right. But they certainly never appear when the poet's hand is sure and his purpose clear. Then Keats recognizes only two articles of faith. One: That there is nothing in nature, in natural emotion, or in the land of dreams which the true poet by the concentration of his vision, the intensification of his mood, and the full use of his heritage of speech cannot incorporate into his imaginative world of pure and breathless beauty. The other: That Art is too great a thing for any but the most generous rivalries; that its rewards are not self-glory or self-aggrandizement, but the supreme excellence of beauty wherever it may be found and whoever may discover it. So, with these principles or instincts directing his pen, he writes, fearless of bathos : "Where swarms of minnows show their little heads, So, set on extreme concentration of effect, he revises and yet again revises until he reaches the final verses of the following series : "Not so much life as a young vulture's wing Would spread upon a field of green-eared corn." "Not so much life as what an eagle's wing Would spread upon a field of green-eared corn." "Not so much life as on a summer's day Robs not at all the dandelion's fleece.' "Not so much life as on a summer's day Robs not one light seed from the feathered grass." So he forces words into new and enlarged meanings in the now famous lines: "O for a beaker full of the warm South, And so, instilling in the vanquished gods of his Hyperion something of his own sportsmanship, he registers their tribute to the vanquishers as those "eagles, golden-feathered, who do tower Keats never shared the proselyting illusions of Shelley that living lyrics could be conducted as one harmonious concert by all men could live in the lyrical spirit and that these various |