to the shelter of houses. It is often I have spent the night on the bare hills. MOTHER. No wonder in that! (She begins to sweep floor) Go out of this now to whatever company you are best used to, whatever they are. The worst of people it is likely they are, thieves and drunkards and shameless women.

TRAVELLING MAN. Maybe so. Drunkards and thieves and shameless women, stones that have fallen, that are trodden under foot, bodies that are spoiled with sores, bodies that are worn with fasting, minds that are broken with much sinning, the poor, the mad, the bad.). MOTHER. Get out with you! Go back to your friends, I say! TRAVELLING MAN. I will go. I will go back to the high road that is walked by the bare feet of the poor, by the innocent bare feet of children. I will go back to the rocks and the wind, to the cries of the trees in the storm! [He goes out. CHILD. He has forgotten his branch!

[Takes it and follows him.

MOTHER (still sweeping). My good plates from the dresser, and dirty red mud on the floor, and the sticks all scattered in every place. (Stoops to pick them up) Where is the child gone? (Goes to door) I don't see him he couldn't have gone to the river-it is getting dark-the bank is slippy. Come back! Come back! Where are you? [Child runs in.

MOTHER. O where were you? I was in dread it was to the river you were gone, or into the river.

CHILD. I went after him. He is gone over the river.

MOTHER. He couldn't do that. He couldn't go through the flood.

CHILD. He did go over it. He was as if walking on the water.
There was a light before his feet.
MOTHER. That could not be so.

your mind?

What put that thought in

CHILD. I called to him to come back for the branch, and he

turned where he was in the river, and he bade me to bring it back, and to show it to yourself.

MOTHER (taking the branch). There are fruit and flowers on it. It is a branch that is not of any earthly tree. (Falls on her knees) He is gone, he is gone, and I never knew him! He was that stranger that gave me all! He is the King of the World!

ABOUT THE PAGEANT: THE MONTHS

A pageant is a processional display, in which many people have a part. It may be given in celebration of a particular historical event in town, city or nation; it may commemorate the founding of a church or college or similar institution; it may pay tribute to the birthday of a notable person. But always it allows many people to take part, and its costumes give colour to the picture.

In early Elizabethan days even before-pageantry was a common form of entertainment, of celebration. But, as plays became more and more confined within a roofed playhouse, the action of the drama became less and less expansive, until pageantry, as an art, almost entirely disappeared. In 1905, it was revived in England by the dramatist, Louis N. Parker; since which time it has spread to all localities of the Englishspeaking race.

In olden times, the people used to dance the seasons in and out, used to sing hymns of praises for the fruit of purple autumn. May-pole rites, Hallowe'en games, Thanksgiving processionals were the common enjoyment of the people. Shakespeare wrote, in his day, what were known as chronicle dramas, where display, as in "Henry V", was the dominant characteristic.

Now, I do not believe, when Christina G. Rossetti wrote this little pageant of "The Months", that she had in mind any such extensive display as used to grace the Courts of the early monarchs of England, when the poets wrote masques and the guilds spent lavish sums on mystery pageants, in celebration of Corpus Christi. Miss Rossetti had no such historic sense. She was one of those quaint souls-religious in fervour and holy in thought — who might have stepped from the pages of her favourite novel, Mrs. Gaskell's "Cranford." There was nothing original in her plan: I have near me two pieces of

similar import, - Charles Lamb's "Masque of Days" and Marguerite Merington's "Father Time and His Children"; and at the opera your fathers and mothers remember the brilliant ballet of "The Dance of the Hours."

But I use Miss Rossetti's "Pageant" because, unlike most of the pageants written to-day, it has no special story to tell other than that which comes from a true poet's heart. She has no propaganda to spread. I wanted greatly to use a modern pageant, but they were all too "utilitarian", which means that their language was not poetically imaginative enough, and their symbolism too complicated.

When you are older, you will know more of the relation between Christina and her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the poet and painter. One of the most beautiful studies, in the period of Lamb and Wordsworth and Rossetti, is that which reveals the devotion existing between brothers and sisters.

THE MONTHS

A PAGEANT

BY CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI