Fifteen years ago the Berlin municipal authorities stoutly refused Professor Baron’s offer to found an orphanage which should be conducted on vegetarian principles.  At the present moment it is being arranged that all school children shall be taught the value of vegetables and leguminous preparations and the wholesomeness of a diet that is relatively non-stimulating and practically meatless.

 D.M.  RICHARDSON.

 THE CURTAINED DOORWAYS.

In George Macdonald’s Phantastes:  a Faery Romance for Men and Women it is told how a man found himself in the midst of a great circular hall built entirely of black marble.  On every side and at regular intervals there were archways, all heavily curtained.  Hearing a faint sound of music proceeding from one of these hidden doorways he went towards it and, drawing aside the hangings, found a large room crowded with statuary, but no sign of an living creature.  Yet he was certain the music had proceeded from that particular archway.  Greatly puzzled, he let the curtain fall and stepped back a few paces.  At once the music continued.  Stepping stealthily and quickly to the curtain, he again lifted it, and received a vivid impression of a crowd of dancing forms suddenly arrested:  something told him beyond dispute that at the moment he had drawn the hangings aside what were now lovely but motionless statues had sprung each to its pedestal out of the mazes of an intricate dance.  Sound and movement had been frozen, in a flash of time, into a crowd of beautiful forms—­in stone.  No statue but seemed to tremble into immobility as the intruder’s gaze turned this way and that no marble face but seemed to be aglow with the music that had died with his entry; no white limb but seemed to be tremulous with the rhythm of the dance that had ceased so suddenly.

If the subtlety and imaginative truth of this story should lead you to read the whole book, I shall have had the privilege of introducing you to what is surely one of the finest and most delicately wrought fantasies in the English language, a fantasy so permeated with beauty and truth that you will neither wish nor need to look for the “moral”.

 But whether you read Phantastes or not, I may be allowed to suggest
 that the incident I have attempted to describe conveys one of the
 secrets of healthy living.

It is a trite saying, that health is harmony.  But I plead for a much wider and fuller interpretation of harmony than is customary. Mens sana in corpore sano—­a sane mind in a healthy body—­does not fill all the requirements of a healthy life.  It is but an excellent theme, wanting orchestration.

It is good to aim at a harmonious working of one’s internal arrangements if one has had the misfortune or the folly to break that harmony.  The physical basis of life must be attended to if we would be well.  Only, you cannot stop there without