them. They accept the pretending, play-acting spirit as a perfectly
natural--no, as an inevitable--part of life, and, with a certain
whimsical seriousness, not unlike that of real children, they provide
for it. You know children can make believe, _know_ that it is make
believe, yet enjoy it all the more for that. So can the Villagers.
Hence, places like--let us say, as an example--"The Pirate's Den."

It is a very real pirate's den, lighted only by candles. A coffin
casts a shadow, and there is a regulation "Jolly Roger," a black flag
ornamented with skull and crossbones. Grim? Surely, but even a
healthy-minded child will play at gruesome and ghoulish games once in
a while.

There is a Dead Man's Chest too,--and if you open it you will find a
ladder leading down into mysterious depths unknown. If you are very
adventurous you will climb down and bump your head against the cellar
ceiling and inspect what is going to be a subterranean grotto as soon
as it can be fitted up. You climb up again and sit in the dim, smoky
little room and look about you. It is the most perfect pirate's den
you can imagine. On the walls hang huge casks and kegs and wine
bottles in their straw covers,--all the signs manual of past and
future orgies. Yet the "Pirate's Den" is "dry"--straw-dry, brick-dry
--as dry as the Sahara. If you want a "drink" the well-mannered
"cut-throat" who serves you will give you a mighty mug of ginger ale
or sarsaparilla. And if you are a real Villager and can still play at
being a real pirate, you drink it without a smile, and solemnly
consider it real red wine filched at the edge of the cutlass from
captured merchantmen on the high seas. On the big, dark centre table
is carefully drawn the map of "Treasure Island."

The pirate who serves you (incidentally he writes poetry and helps to
edit a magazine among other things) apologises for the lack of a
Stevensonian parrot.

"A chap we know is going to bring one back from the South Sea
Islands," he declares seriously. "And we are going to teach it to say,
'Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!'"

If, while you are at the "Pirate's Den" you care to climb a rickety, but
enchanted staircase outside the old building (it's pre-Revolutionary, you
know) you will come to the "Aladdin Shop"--where coffee and Oriental
sweets are specialties. It is a riot of strange and beautiful
colour--vivid and Eastern and utterly intoxicating. A very talented and
picturesque Villager has paint