red by Main Street. Never, not all her life,
would she behold jungles and the tombs of kings. There were strange
things in the world, they really existed; but she would never see them.

She would recreate them in plays!

She would make the dramatic association understand her aspiration. They
would, surely they would----

She looked doubtfully at the impenetrable reality of yawning trolley
conductor and sleepy passengers and placards advertising soap and
underwear.

CHAPTER XVIII

I

SHE hurried to the first meeting of the play-reading committee. Her
jungle romance had faded, but she retained a religious fervor, a surge
of half-formed thought about the creation of beauty by suggestion.

A Dunsany play would be too difficult for the Gopher Prairie
association. She would let them compromise on Shaw--on "Androcles and
the Lion," which had just been published.

The committee was composed of Carol, Vida Sherwin, Guy Pollock, Raymie
Wutherspoon, and Juanita Haydock. They were exalted by the picture of
themselves as being simultaneously business-like and artistic. They
were entertained by Vida in the parlor of Mrs. Elisha Gurrey's
boarding-house, with its steel engraving of Grant at Appomattox, its
basket of stereoscopic views, and its mysterious stains on the gritty
carpet.

Vida was an advocate of culture-buying and efficiency-systems. She
hinted that they ought to have (as at the committee-meetings of the
Thanatopsis) a "regular order of business," and "the reading of the
minutes," but as there were no minutes to read, and as no one knew
exactly what was the regular order of the business of being literary,
they had to give up efficiency.

Carol, as chairman, said politely, "Have you any ideas about what play
we'd better give first?" She waited for them to look abashed and vacant,
so that she might suggest "Androcles."

Guy Pollock answered with disconcerting readiness, "I'll tell you: since
we're going to try to do something artistic, and not simply fool around,
I believe we ought to give something classic. How about 'The School for
Scandal'?"

"Why----Don't you think that has been done a good deal?"

"Yes, perhaps it has."

Carol was ready to say, "How about Bernard Shaw?" when he treacherously
went on, "How would it be then to give a Greek drama--say 'Oedipus
Tyrannus'?"

"Why, I don't believe----"

Vida Sherwin intruded, "I'm sure that would be too hard for us. Now I've
brought something that I