than during his college course. Yet the years slip by faster than we realize. It is, after all, but four short steps from the dreaded entrance examinations, to the graduate's degree, however much may be the stumbling, and soon the cap and gown shrouds the senior in black, a sombre garb, symbolic in more ways than one of Commencement Day. But let us leave such melancholy thoughts and come back to our books again, friends that will never desert us, if, like Barkis, we are "willin'," and pay them the respect that is their due.

Let him, who wishes to find out what the college men are reading, pay a visit to Linonia on some afternoon just before the bell tinkles its warning of closed doors. Upon the long table in the middle of the room he will see rows of books not yet returned to their places upon the shelves. Here is one of Cooper's Leatherstocking tales lying close beside one of the American Statesman, an appropriate couple, for our first statesmen were our pioneers; a volume of Spenser and one of Spinoza are back to back; the Red Rover presses hard against What's Mine's Mine, a maxim the Rover observed most religiously; there is the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, and here are Romola in a red binding, and the Scarlet Letter side by side; a story of Howells' rests against Lowell's Study Window-gaining dignity by the contact, let us hope: the Rise of the Dutch Republic towers over a small edition of Walton's Angler, and besides these are a host of others. Poetry and philosophy, history, fiction, all are crowded together in a happy and appropriate mixture. Such a table full is more eloquent for our purpose than a catalogue, or columns of dry figures. The college men, it is evident, reads as his taste may dictate, and he is right in so doing, as long as his taste is good. To read by list and catalogue is to make a dull and tedious work of an otherwise pleasure.

There are, furthermore, if we but knew it, appropriate places for reading; some books should be read in the library. A huge encyclopedia weighing down a college desk is formidable, but upon the table in the reading

room of the University Library with an open note book by its side and a hand turning its pages, it occupies a natural and graceful position. An old dust-covered volume from a top shelf in Linonia loses half of the aroma of antiquity, to say nothing of missing the kindly faces, if I may call them such, of its companion volumes, if it be carried beyond the baize doors.

Indeed, there are appropriate times for reading as well as places, yet in spite of all the attractions which a library possesses with its shelves on shelves of books and its studious, literary atmosphere, as if the authors themselves were hidden somewhere in the alcoves, there is nothing like a good quiet read in your own room, sitting in your own favorite chair, curled up or stretched out in your own favorite position, with the lamp a necessary and silent companion at your elbow. In your hand there must be a book that "smells of the candle light,” as Charles Lamb would say, to make your enjoyment complete. Let the evening be a winter evening, let the wind be as uproarious as it will, provided there are no chinks in the walls, and you may, with Samuel Palmer, "refresh the fire," if there happily is one-" and have tolerable weather with the poets." Then and then only can you sympathize with Palmer, and be easily persuaded to say in his words: "Much as I love my calling, I am a true book worm, and hope on my return to find, about once a month, a whole day for a great Read! Some place the bliss in action; I, in a dull, pattering, gusty December day, which forbids our wishes to rove beyond the tops of the chimney-pots-a good fire, a sofa strewed with books, a reading friend, and above all, a locked door, forbidding impertinent intrusion. There should be a light dinner about one o'clock; then a little prosy chatnot too argumentative-just to help digestion; then books again till blessed green-tea-time winds us up for Macbeth or Hamlet, and ecstasy!"

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John H. Field.

THE FORTUNE PLAYHOUSE IN THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH.

N old London-the London of Queen Elizabeth-the feeblest imagination can roam with unceasing delight. Time with a kindly hand has worn away the rougher edges of those crude days and turned the age with all its imperfections into a realm of Fancy. The narrow, crooked streets, the quaint houses with homely fronts and lozenged windows, the huge ox-carts rumbling over fashionable thoroughfares, all these afford a taste of delightful antiquity.

But to see the old city in its holiday mood, when all is uproar, when everybody, from the Queen's page to the corpulent councilman, is abroad in gala attire and ready to squander his last shilling, it is necessary to visit London on a theatre day and catch the ancient Londoner in a humor for being amused. A crowd of excited Spaniards on their way to a bullfight is not more stormy than were the enthusiastic throngs which flocked to a good play at the Fortune in the reign of Elizabeth.

The Fortune Playhouse, like most of the popular theatres of that time, was a wooden structure, by no means elaborate but capacious, and that quite satisfied the average Englishman. A flag, gaily flaunting from the roof, was the means of attracting in an incredibly short time, vast crowds of every age and condition. So scandalized was a certain good clergyman of the period that he essayed to save his people from perdition with these words, little knowing what their value would be as history: "Those flags of defiance against God, and trumpets that are blown to gather together such company, will sooner fill those places than the preaching of the holy word of God."

Over the main entrance there shone in resplendent letters also the sign of the theatre. Through this ingress poured the vulgar, separate doors being reserved to admit to their boxes persons of rank or estimation. Now, as

there was, at the main entrance, only one doorkeeper, such a turmoil arose that finally a royal ordinance was published to abate the nuisance and to remove temptation from those who were inclined to slip in without paying the stipulated fee. Indeed, the author of a play entitled: "If it be not good the Devil is in it," finishes his dedication by wishing his friends and fellows "a full audience and one honest doorkeeper."

Let no one suppose that the disorder ended at the door. However, within, it was of a more entertaining kind. In the two-penny galleries sat a promiscuous mob "glewed together by streams of strong breath." Here, those who were ironically called gentlemen could indulge in their knaveries to their hearts' content, but in the pit and in the surrounding boxes were the staid and dignified, estimable persons like Sir Roger de Coverley who went simply to see the play.

Can we not imagine Sir Roger back there somewhere in the audience taking the whole thing in-even the clown as he goes dancing about with his tinkling bells and glittering spangles? "This is one of the best parts of the whole performance," thinks the old gentleman, “ even better than that part of Richard III where the king cries out in tragic tones: "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!"

Seats next the stage were in special demand, not merely because of their nearness to the actors, but, also because tinker or tanner-provided he paid his twelve pence-could hobnob and feel hail-fellow-well-met with the biggest lord in London. That wits and gallants were wont to flatter the public by sitting in the most conspicuous positions we may glean from the following lines:

"When young Rogero goes to see the play

His pleasure is you put him on the stage,
The better to demonstrate his array
And how he sits attended by his page."

In fact,

That young Rogero smoked is also certain. everybody smoked before the play began, and, if history

is not incorrect, the whole audience regaled itself with nuts and apples and endeavored to slake the thirst of summer by quaffing plenteous quantities of good old English ale. Whilst the spectators were thus enjoying themselves, a diminutive band of musicians discoursed music from viols, recorders, lutes, hautboys and other instruments; but it is highly probable that the audience liked their nuts and apples far better than they did the feeble strains of an Elizabethan orchestra.

As to the stage settings, how dumbfounded would a modern stage-carpenter have been, could he have been present to see the easy way in which Macbeth's witches vanished through a great hole in the stage floor, or, forsooth, a sign put up bearing the legend "Ye Castle Moat!" The looker-on had to rely on his imagination for the effects which are now produced by the shifting of painted scenery.

"The air-blest castle round whose wholesome crest

The martlet, guest of summer, chose her nest ;
The forest walks of Arden's fair domain,

Where Jaques fed his solitary vein;

No pencil's aid as yet had dared supply,
Seen only by the intellectual eye."

Strange indeed it seems to us that this age with its crude attempts at realistic scenery should have been the Golden Age of the English drama. Marlowe, Greene, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Shakespere,-what a host of splendid names have immortalized this brilliant era! How rarely the theatre-goer of the present day knows even the name of the author whose work he is witnessing! Modern days have developed wonderfully the art of realistic representation, but the modern stage, with all its beauty of scenic effects, seems to be without that genius which inspired the poetical drama of the days when people flocked to "The Fortune."

R. T. Holbrook.