f practice. The next
Congress is arranged for Easter 1914, at Kiev.

_A Hopeful Sign._

Fifteen years ago the Berlin municipal authorities stoutly refused
Professor Baron's offer to found an orphanage which should be
conducted on vegetarian principles. At the present moment it is being
arranged that all school children shall be taught the value of
vegetables and leguminous preparations and the wholesomeness of a diet
that is relatively non-stimulating and practically meatless.

D.M. RICHARDSON.

THE CURTAINED DOORWAYS.

In George Macdonald's _Phantastes: a Faery Romance for Men and Women_
it is told how a man found himself in the midst of a great circular
hall built entirely of black marble. On every side and at regular
intervals there were archways, all heavily curtained. Hearing a faint
sound of music proceeding from one of these hidden doorways he went
towards it and, drawing aside the hangings, found a large room crowded
with statuary, but no sign of an living creature. Yet he was certain
the music had proceeded from that particular archway. Greatly puzzled,
he let the curtain fall and stepped back a few paces. At once the
music continued. Stepping stealthily and quickly to the curtain, he
again lifted it, and received a vivid impression of a crowd of dancing
forms suddenly arrested: something told him beyond dispute that at the
moment he had drawn the hangings aside what were now lovely but
motionless statues had sprung each to its pedestal out of the mazes of
an intricate dance. Sound and movement had been frozen, in a flash of
time, into a crowd of beautiful forms--in stone. No statue but seemed
to tremble into immobility as the intruder's gaze turned this way and
that no marble face but seemed to be aglow with the music that had
died with his entry; no white limb but seemed to be tremulous with the
rhythm of the dance that had ceased so suddenly.

If the subtlety and imaginative truth of this story should lead you to
read the whole book, I shall have had the privilege of introducing you
to what is surely one of the finest and most delicately wrought
fantasies in the English language, a fantasy so permeated with beauty
and truth that you will neither wish nor need to look for the "moral".

But whether you read _Phantastes_ or not, I may be allowed to suggest
that the incident I have attempted to describe conveys one of the
secrets of healthy living.

It is a trite saying, that health is harmon