a limited respite.

[Illustration: WENT FISHING.]

Away I went to the show, saw the secretary--from a safe distance--and
immediately telegraphed: "Have seen the secretary. Hard at work setting
matters right. Awfully sorry." Then I hired a boat, and went fishing for
the rest of the day. In the evening I wired: "Beauty must have got
changed. Cats now all going home. Found clue and am following up. All
right shortly." But my aunt's patience had expired. Next morning came a
curt note saying she would at once join me, and either rescue Beauty or
settle that secretary. How could I ever face those searching spectacles!
I fled. From a lonely spot on the wilds of Dartmoor I wired: "Am
following clue sharp. Getting close up. Good news next time." Back came
an answer: "Shall be with you to-morrow at noon." At noon next day, I
boarded the mail packet Tongariro, bound from Plymouth to New Zealand.

[Illustration: OFF TO NEW ZEALAND.]

* * * * *

PEOPLE I HAVE NEVER MET

BY SCOTT RANKIN.

MRS. HUMPHRY WARD.

[Illustration]

"You can do nothing by despising the past and its products; you
also can do nothing by being too much afraid of them.... Be
content to be a new 'sect,' 'conventicle,' or what not, so long
as you feel that you are _something_, with a life and purpose
of its own, in this tangle of a world."--_Robert Elsmere_.

* * * * *

THE IDLERS CLUB

Is Love a Practical Reality or a Pleasing Fiction?

[Sidenote: Mrs. Lynn Linton thinks there is no doubt as to Love's
reality.]

Of the desperate reality of the passion there is no doubt; of the
intrinsic value of the thing beloved there may be many. The passion for
which men and women have died stands like a tower four-square to all the
winds of heaven; but how far that tower has been self-created by fancy,
and how much is objectively real, who is the wise man that can
determine? What is Love? We know nothing of its source. Sense and sex
cannot wholly explain its mystery, else would there be no friendship
left among us; and elective affinity is but a dainty carving on the
chancel stalls. The loveliness which makes that special person the
veritable Rose of the World to us exists but in our imagination. It is
no rose that we adore--only at the best a bedeguar, of which the origin
is a disagreeable little insect. We believe in the exquisite harmony of
those atoms which have a