WILL SHAKESPEARE. Nay, Ben, cool thy blood, a quarrel will not serve. This tanner is a bitter-minded, heavyhanded man; he'd only throw you into a pickling-vat. The children must be thought about.

ONE OF THE MEN. Here's a player's daughter who has no father, and a player whose father will not have him, orphaned by fate and disinherited by folly, common stock to us all. Kind hearts are trumps, my honest Ben; make it a stock company, and let us all be in it.

ANOTHER MAN. Will, the lad would make a better "Rosalind" than Roger Prynne for your new play.

WILL SHAKESPEARE. So he would, but before we put him into "As You Like It," suppose we ask him how he does like it. Now, Nick, you have heard what these gentlemen have said, what have you to say, my lad?

NICK. Why, sirs, you are all kind, very, very kind indeed, sirs, but II - want my mother-oh, masters, I do want my mother!

[One of the men turns abruptly and walks out; he comes back with Nick's father.

WILL SHAKESPEARE. Sing your last song, Ben.

[Sits down and draws Nick to him.

BEN JONSON. [Sings "Drink to me only with thine eyes." MR. ATTWOOD. My son, my only son! Master Will Shakespeare, I've come about a matter.

WILL SHAKESPEARE. Out with it, sir; there is much here to be said. Come, say what you have to say.

MR. ATTWOOD. There's naught I can say, but that I be sorry and want my son! Nick! Nick! I be wrung for you! Will you not come home — just for your mother's sake, if you will not come for mine?

NICK (joyfully). Father!
Father! but Cicely?

Will

MR. ATTWOOD. Bring the lass with you, Nick; we 'll make out, lad, we 'll make out. God will not let it all go wrong. you come, lad?

NICK. O Father, mother will be glad to have Cicely, won't she? WILL SHAKESPEARE (carrying two bags). I have a little story

to tell you all. When Gaston Carew, lately Master-Player to the Lord High Admiral's Company, was arraigned before my Lord Justice for the killing of that rascal, he sent for

WILL SHAKESPEARE. He left these two bags of gold, one marked for my only beloved daughter, Cicely Carew, with my love forever; and the other marked: Nicholas Attwood, alias Master Skylark, whom I, Gaston Carew, Master-Player, stole away from Stratford Town, Anno Domini, 1596. He also begged that Nicholas Attwood would forgive him. NICK. Why, that I shall; he was wondrous kind to me, except that he would not let me go.

WILL SHAKESPEARE. These funds, Attwood, will keep you easy-minded. Now I need a tenant for this new place of mine. You have always been spoken of as an honest man. What say you, Simon Attwood?

MR. ATTWOOD. Why, sir, why, sirs, all of you, I have been a hard man, and somewhat of a fool. Ay, sirs, a very fool! God knows I'm sorry for it from the bottom of my heart. [Buries head in arms.

WILL SHAKESPEARE. Nay, Simon Attwood, you have only been mistaken. Come, sit up and eat with us. Come, neighbour.

MR. ATTWOOD. Nay, I shall go home. I thank you, sirs. You

have been good to my boy. There are kind hearts in the world that I had not dreamed of. I shall go home to my wife. There be things to say before the boy comes home, and I have muckle need to tell her that I love her, I have not done so these many years.

BEN JONSON. Why, Neighbour Tanner, you are a right good fellow. A toast, all: "Here's to all kind hearts!"

WILL SHAKESPEARE. Wherever they may be!

[Attwood goes off the stage and instantly returns with wife. MR. ATTWOOD. Margaret.

MRS. ATTWOOD. Simon, what is it?

MR. ATTWOOD. Naught, Margaret; - but you have been a

good wife; our lad is coming home; and I love you, — is it too late to tell you?

MRS. ATTWOOD. Nay, Simon, never too late to mend, — but our boy? (Nick runs across the stage, followed by the men. Holding him to her heart) My boy!

NICK. Mother, Mother dear, I have been to London Town; I have been to the palace; and I have seen the Queen; but Mother, I have never been to the place where I should rather be than just where you are, Mother dear.

[Tableau: Father puts an arm around Cicely.

THE END

ABOUT ALICE IN WONDERLAND

I could wish young readers no better time than an afternoon with five books: S. D. Collingwood's "Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll" (Century), Belle Moses's "Lewis Carroll" (Appleton), a good edition of "Alice in Wonderland", and the play which Miss Gerstenberg has made from the immortal nonsense stories of "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass." Others have tried to write stories just as whimsical, but they have not succeeded because, first, they did not have the requisite genius, but principally because they were not Lewis Carroll.

There are two things hardly believable in the case of Lewis Carroll, whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson: that he was a man of holy orders, and that he had a wide reputation as a mathematician and lecturer at Oxford, besides writing profound books on Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Euclid in particular. When "Alice" was published, the public could not reconcile these two sides to Lewis Carroll's nature. It took the children to see in the shy, almost precise "don" of the University, who stammered slightly, the fun lover that he was, who could tell tales just as he wrote them, and whose letters to his young friends are full of quaint conceits, wholesome truths and enjoyable nonsense.

If you will read the biographies I have mentioned you will discover how "Alice in Wonderland" was born in a boat one midsummer day, on the Thames River, when the real Alice Liddell started Lewis Carroll on the road toward fame and fortune farthest away from mathematics. If you will read further, you will find that one of Lewis Carroll's dearest friends was little Isa Bowman, who played Alice in the Royal Globe Theater's performance (London, December, 1888) of a musical dream play, founded on the "Alice" books, by H. Savile Clark,