l's cruel blow--
Sheep without a shepherd, when the snow shuts out the sky--
Oh! Why did you leave us, Owen? Why did you die?"

The Elder Statesmen listened in critical silence, while Larry, not
without stumbles, stormed on through the eight verses of the poem.
When he had finished it, there was a pause. The audience was
impressed, even though they had no intention of admitting the fact.
Christian gave a tremendous sigh. The contest for the defunct rabbit,
that had been arrested, broke out again, fiercely, but with caution.
Then Richard said, dubiously:

"Well, that's all right, Larry--I meant it's jolly sad, and awfully
good poetry, I'm sure--but how on earth are you going to work a show
out of it? I can't see--"

"Unless," interrupted Judith, thoughtfully, "unless we sort of acted
it--?"

John, who loved "dressing up," woke to life; even Richard began to see
daylight.

"That's not a bad notion, Judy!" he said briskly: "bags I Cromwell!
Larry, you can be Owen what's-his-name."

Larry came down like a shot bird from the sphere of romance to which
the poem had borne him.

"I hadn't thought of any scheme," he said, pulling himself together;
"I only wanted to give you a kind of notion of the rotten way
England's always treated Ireland--"

"But let's!" cried Christian; "let's act the whole book!"

Truisms are of their essence dull, but they must sometimes be
submitted to, and the truism as to a book's possible influence on the
young and impressionable cannot here be avoided. What it is that
decides if the book is to stamp itself on the plastic mind, or if the
mind is to assert itself and stamp on the book, is a detail that
admits less easily of dogmatism. The Companionage of Finn remained in
being for but two periods of holiday. Before the boys had returned to
school, it had seen its best days; the scheme for an armed invasion of
England had been abandoned, even the more matured project of storming
Dublin Castle was set aside; by the end of the Christmas holidays it
had been formally dissolved.

It is not easy to understand, it is still harder to explain what it
was in those fierce denunciations and complaints, outcome of that time
of general revolt, the "Roaring Forties" of the nineteenth century,
that made them echo in Larry's heart, nor why the restless, passionate
spirit that inspired them should have remained with him, a perturbing
influence from which he never wholly escaped. His young soul burned
w