, been a night bird ever since I came out of the schoolroom, when
I habitually sat up reading till long past midnight. Later on, when I
adopted literature as a profession, I still found that "To steal a
few hours from the night" was to ensure the quietest time, and the
pleasantest, for pen and brain work; and, for at least the last
twenty-five years, I have rarely put out my lamp before two or three
in the morning. Occasionally, when work presses and a manuscript has
to be despatched by the earliest morning mail, I remain at my desk the
whole night through; and I can with certainty say that the last
chapter of every book I have ever written has been finished at early
morning. In summertime, it is certainly delightful to draw up the
blinds and complete in sunlight a task begun when the lamps were
lighted in the evening.

And this reminds me of a little incident--too trivial, perhaps, to be
worth recording--which befell me so long ago as 1873. I had visited
the Dolomites during the previous summer, not returning to England
till close upon Christmastime, and I had been occupied during the
greater part of the spring in preparing that account of the journey
entitled "Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys." Time ran somewhat
short towards the last, as my publishers were anxious to produce the
volume early in June; and when it came to the point of finishing off,
I sat up all through one beautiful night in May, till the farewell
words were written. At the very moment when, with a sigh of
satisfaction, I laid down my pen, a wandering nightingale on the
pear-tree outside my library window, burst into such a flood of song
as I have never heard before or since. The pear-tree was in full
blossom; the sky behind it was blue and cloudless; and as I listened
to the unwonted music, I could not help thinking that, had I been a
pious scribe of the Middle Ages who had just finished a laboriously
written life of some departed saint, I should inevitably have believed
that the bird was a ghostly messenger sent by the good saint himself
to congratulate me upon the completion of my task.

THE TYRANNY OF NATIONALISM.[12]

BY M. J. SAVAGE.

[12] This article is a reply to "The Tyranny of All the
People," by the Rev. Francis Bellamy, in July ARENA.

It is a somewhat curious task to which I find myself set. To go on
with it may be to lay myself open to censure on the part of the
"Society for the Prevention of Cruelty