f listeners to the household tale of folk-lore.
"Mary, Mary" is the simplest of stories: a girl sees this and that,
meets a Great Creature who makes advances to her, is humiliated,
finds a young champion and comes into her fortune--that is all there
is to it as a story. But is it not enough to go with Mary to Stephens'
Green and watch the young ducks "pick up nothing with the greatest
eagerness and swallow it with the greatest delight," and after that
to notice that the ring priced One Hundred Pounds has been taken
from the Jewellers' window, and then stand outside the theatre with
her and her mother and make up with them the story of the plays from
the pictures on the posters?--plays of mystery and imagination they
must have surely been.

Then, of course, there is always Mary's mother; and Mrs. Makebelieve,
with her beaked nose, and her eyes like pools of ink, and her
eagle-flights of speech would give a backbone to any story. Mrs.
Makebelieve has and holds all the privileges of the poor and the
lonely. Moreover, she is the eternal Charwoman. "She could not remain
for any length of time in peoples' employment without being troubled
by the fact that these folk had houses of their own and were actually
employing her in a menial capacity." Mrs. Makebelieve is, I think, a
typical figure. She is the incarnation of the pride and liveliness and
imaginative exuberance that permit the poor to live.

How poor are Mary and Mrs. Makebelieve? We know their lack by the
measure of their desire. Mrs. Makebelieve, always generous, would have
paid her servants Ten Shillings per Week each, and their Board. And we
know that she had often observed desolate people dragging themselves
through the streets, standing to glare through the windows of bakeries
and confectioners' shops, with little children in some of their arms,
and that thinking of such things every morsel she ate would have
choked her were it not for her own hunger. By our being brought to
desire what Mary and her mother desired we come to know the things
they lacked.

Yes, poverty was the state in which Mary and Mrs. Makebelieve existed,
but freedom was the other side of that poverty. They had not to set
the bounds of realization upon their wishes. They were not shut off,
as too many of us are, from the adventure and the enchantment that are
in things. A broken mirror upon the wall of a bare room! It is, after
all, that wonder of wonders, a thing. But one cannot convey to th