for a colyumist was the Forest of Arden. See how zealous
contributors hung their poems round on trees so that he could not
miss them. Is it not all the very core and heartbeat of what we call
"romance," that endearing convention that submits the harsh
realities and interruptions of life to a golden purge of fancy? How,
we sometimes wonder, can any one grow old as long as he can still
read "As You Like It," and feel the magic of that best-loved and
most magical of stage directions--_The Forest of Arden_.

And now, while we are still in the soft Shakespearean mood, comes
"Twelfth Night"--traditionally devoted to dismantling the Christmas
Tree; and indeed there is no task so replete with luxurious and
gentle melancholy. For by that time the toys which erst were so
splendid are battered and bashed; the cornucopias empty of candy
(save one or two striped sticky shards of peppermint which elude the
thrusting index, and will be found again next December); the
dining-room floor is thick with fallen needles; the gay little
candles are burnt down to a small gutter of wax in the tin holders.
The floor sparkles here and there with the fragments of tinsel balls
or popcorn chains that were injudiciously hung within leap of puppy
or grasp of urchin. And so you see him, the diligent parent,
brooding with a tender mournfulness and sniffing the faint whiff of
that fine Christmas tree odour--balsam and burning candles and
fist-warmed peppermint--as he undresses the prickly boughs. Here
they go into the boxes, red, green, and golden balls, tinkling glass
bells, stars, paper angels, cotton-wool Santa Claus, blue birds,
celluloid goldfish, mosquito netting, counterfeit stockings,
nickel-plated horns, and all the comical accumulation of oddities
that gathers from year to year in the box labelled CHRISTMAS TREE
THINGS, FRAGILE. The box goes up to the attic, and the parent blows