ced the whole of it in a sack and shook it up;
taking out piece by piece, he pasted the strips down as they happened to
come. The result, in such an MS., dealing with nonsense on one page and
theology on another, was audacious in the extreme, if not absolutely
profane--for example:

"And I found myself repeating, as I left the Church, the words of Jacob,
when he '_awaked out of his sleep_,' surely the Lord is in this.

"And once more those shrill discordant tones rang out:--

"'He thought he saw a Banker's Clerk
Descending from a bus;
He looked again, and found it was--
A Hippopotamus.'"

These incongruous strips were elaborately and mysteriously marked with
numbers and letters and various hieroglyphics, to decipher which would
really have turned my assumed eccentricity into positive madness. I
therefore sent the whole MS. back to him, and again threatened to
strike! This had the desired effect. I then received MS. I could read,
although frequently puzzled by its being mixed up with Euclid and
problems in abstruse mathematics.

I soon discovered that I had undertaken a far more difficult task than I
anticipated, for in the first letter of instructions I received from the
author he frankly acknowledged I had my work "cut out." "Cut out"
suggests dressmaking, the very subject first chosen for discussion and
correspondence.

The extraordinary workings of this unique mind are shown by quotations
from his letters to me:

"I think I had better explain part of the plot, as to these two--Sylvie
and Bruno. They are not fairies right through the book--but _children_.
All these conditions make their _dress_ rather a puzzle. They mustn't
have _wings_; that is clear. And it must be _quite_ the common dress of
London life. It should be as fanciful as possible, so as _just_ to be
presentable in Society. The friends might be able to say 'What
oddly-dressed children!' but they oughtn't to say 'They are not human!'

"Now I think you'll say you have 'got your work cut out for you,' to
invent a suitable dress!"

How I wish I had had those dresses cut out for me! The above
instructions were quickly followed by other suggestions which added to
my already scanty idea of a costume suitable to Kensington Gardens and
to fairyland! I was thinking this difficulty would be lessened if the
story took place in winter, when I received another letter, whi