It is
the mad creation of the souls of two millionaires."

"At least you have to explain," answered my friend gravely, "how it is
that the hard democratic doctrine and the hard telegraphic outline have
appeared together; you have... But bless my soul, we must be getting
home. I had no idea it was so late. Let me see, I think this is our
way through the wood. Come, let us both curse the telegraph post for
entirely different reasons and get home before it is dark."

We did not get home before it was dark. For one reason or another we had
underestimated the swiftness of twilight and the suddenness of night,
especially in the threading of thick woods. When my friend, after the
first five minutes' march, had fallen over a log, and I, ten minutes
after, had stuck nearly to the knees in mire, we began to have some
suspicion of our direction. At last my friend said, in a low, husky
voice:

"I'm afraid we're on the wrong path. It's pitch dark."

"I thought we went the right way," I said, tentatively.

"Well," he said; and then, after a long pause, "I can't see any
telegraph poles. I've been looking for them."

"So have I," I said. "They're so straight."

We groped away for about two hours of darkness in the thick of the
fringe of trees which seemed to dance round us in derision. Here and
there, however, it was possible to trace the outline of something just
too erect and rigid to be a pine tree. By these we finally felt our way
home, arriving in a cold green twilight before dawn.

A Drama of Dolls

In a small grey town of stone in one of the great Yorkshire dales, which
is full of history, I entered a hall and saw an old puppet-play
exactly as our fathers saw it five hundred years ago. It was admirably
translated from the old German, and was the original tale of Faust. The
dolls were at once comic and convincing; but if you cannot at once laugh
at a thing and believe in it, you have no business in the Middle Ages.
Or in the world, for that matter.

The puppet-play in question belongs, I believe, to the fifteenth
century; and indeed the whole legend of Dr. Faustus has the colour of
that grotesque but somewhat gloomy time. It is very unfortunate that
we so often know a thing that is past only by its tail end. We remember
yesterday only by its sunsets. There are many instances. One is
Napoleon. We always think of him as a fat old despot, ruling Europe with
a ruthless military machine. But that, as Lord Rosebery wo