ly divides opinion; and wherever opinion is sharply or at all
evenly divided we are out of place. You are under exactly the same
orders as those which Charlotte received from my mother--you must not go
down into the garden while the gardeners are actually at work; only when
they have finished you may come and gather the results. You are run by
the State merely to give prestige to the established order, and you must
not support things that are not already popular."

"You are mistaken, Max," said his father, in despondent protest.
"Nothing whatever prevents me; only I haven't anything to take hold of."

"Yet I have been credibly informed," replied Max, "that when you go to
see a so-called problem play of the more intellectual kind, it is
arranged for you to go in Lent, for the simple reason that during that
period of fasting it is against etiquette for the papers to make any
announcement of the fact."

"You don't say so!" exclaimed the King.

"You were not aware of it, then? Yet it is all arranged for you by the
Comptroller-General. Tell him that you wish to go and see _The Gaudy
Girl_ presently, on its five hundredth performance, and he will raise no
difficulty whatever. Tell him that you intend to be present at a
performance of _Law and Order_, a piece that has managed to hold on
through thirty performances in spite of the many interests opposed to
it, and difficulties will immediately occur to him. Your going would
revive the fortunes of that play; and as it makes a very direct attack
upon our present judicial system, you can have nothing to do with it.
Yet I hear that as a result of its production modifications in our
criminal procedure have already been discussed."

"Max," said the King, "you are quite unfair! Our last State performance
was of a play that attacked the very things you are always talking
about, money-lending, gambling, commercial greed, and the rest of it;
and it was the Comptroller-General himself who selected it."

"There!" exulted Max, "now you have given me an example, and I will tell
you what happened. You had as your guest the king of a country
possessing a real school of drama which is affecting the whole of the
European stage. What did we do in his honor and for the honor of our
dramatic literature? We chose a play of sixty years ago--our worst
period--a piece of clever bombastic fustian mildewed with age; and we
chose it merely because it contained the greatest possible number of
small '