also puts into what he says. And he is the only
man I ever met who can sing his stories as well as tell them. Like the
rest of the Irish writers of to-day, what he writes has a sense of
spiritual equality as amongst all men and women--a sense of a
democracy that is inherent in the world.

[Illustration: signature: Padraic Colum]

New York, September, 1917.

MARY, MARY

I

Mary Makebelieve lived with her mother in a small room at the very top
of a big, dingy house in a Dublin back street. As long as she could
remember she had lived in that top back room. She knew every crack in
the ceiling, and they were numerous and of strange shapes. Every spot
of mildew on the ancient wall-paper was familiar. She had, indeed,
watched the growth of most from a grayish shade to a dark stain, from
a spot to a great blob, and the holes in the skirting of the walls,
out of which at nighttime the cockroaches came rattling, she knew
also. There was but one window in the room, and when she wished to
look out of it she had to push the window up, because the grime of
many years had so encrusted the glass that it was of no more than the
demi-semi-transparency of thin horn. When she did look there was
nothing to see but a bulky array of chimney-pots crowning a next-door
house, and these continually hurled jays of soot against her window;
therefore, she did not care to look out often, for each time that she
did so she was forced to wash herself, and as water had to be carried
from the very bottom of the five-story house up hundreds and hundreds
of stairs to her room, she disliked having to use too much water.

Her mother seldom washed at all. She held that washing was very
unhealthy and took the natural gloss off the face, and that, moreover,
soap either tightened the skin or made it wrinkle. Her own face was
very tight in some places and very loose in others, and Mary
Makebelieve often thought that the tight places were spots which her
mother used to wash when she was young, and the loose parts were
those which had never been washed at all. She thought that she would
prefer to be either loose all over her face or tight all over it, and,
therefore, when she washed she did it thoroughly, and when she
abstained she allowed of no compromise.

Her mother's face was the color of old, old ivory. Her nose was like a
great strong beak, and on it the skin was stretched very tightly, so
that her nose shone dully when the candle was lit. H