hands. Tsarpi, who fears and hates her husband, agrees to aid the priest by turning Naaman's mind from thoughts of war, for which purpose the oracle of Rimmon will be appealed to, and then in the event of failure, Naaman shall receive a cup of poisoned wine from the hands of his wife. Ruahmah, a captive princess of Israel, and now an attendant in Tsarpi's train, overhears the plot and later attempts to warn Naaman, for whom she bears a love that had its inspiration when, as a child, she saw him ride to battle against the common foe of Syria and Is consulted and that Tsarpi, who has served in the temple, shall read. The god directs. that peace be made, and pronounces a curse upon him who would lead the Syrian army into war in defiance of the divine command. Naaman is unmoved. He covenants to take upon himself the vengeance of the god whom he does not fear and cries to the King to be permitted to return the golden yoke to Assyria at the head of his army. The King consents, and Rezon calls upon Naaman to send his pledge in a cup at Rimmon's altar. Despite the renewed warning of Ruahmah, One of the scenes that brought forth the strongest approbation rael. But he smiles at her fears, thinking them the dreams of a troubled brain, and gives her a necklace of gold as a reward for her devotion. The Assryian envoys come before the King, bearing the golden yoke of peace and the red horn of war. The nobles speak for peace, but Naaman calls upon the King to bid him ride against the enemy. The assembled populace cries its approval. Then Rezon, the high-priest, proposes that the oracle of Rimmon be Naaman drinks, offering his life as the pledge of the freedom of Damascus. Naaman wins a complete victory over the Assyrians, but returns to Damascus, blind and stricken with leprosy. His friends fall away from him and no one remains but Ruahmah, the captive maid, whom he mistakes for his wife, Tsarpi. Ruahmah leads Naaman, the leper, down to her country, Israel, where, acting upon the counsel of the prophet Elisha, he bathes seven times in the Jordan. Strong in his belief in the omnipotence of the benignant God of Israel, he returns to his camp to find that in his absence Rezon has come down from Syria, and has surprised and utterly defeated his men. dying soldier tells him that his preserver has been carried away captive. With his dying breath, he calls Naaman's attention to her amulet, which Naaman recognizes as the chain he gave the Israelite maid in Damascus. Then, for the first time, he becomes aware of the identity of the woman who has saved his life. His enemy. The King takes courage and orders Rezon to return the maid. Rezon promises to obey, but calls first for the sacrifice to placate the god. The King fearfully consents, and the curtains are drawn back, disclosing the monstrous and hideous image of Rimmon. Ruahmah is bound at the altar, ready to be offered up to the god. At the command of the highpriest to bow down, Naaman stabs him, and, springing upon the altar, takes Ruahmah in his arms. The poetry of "The House of Rimmon" arrayed with bright and gaudy Oriental coloring stretched out on either side of the steps which led up in the very center to the altar and image of Rimmon, the god of Damascus. About the platform the stage was set with growing palms through which the entrances of the actors were made. A full moon aided by electrics lit up the stage and showed the great white wall of concrete in the background rising straight up to a blue-black sky. Directly opposite sat thousands of specta tors upon the concrete tiers built in the form of a semi-circle. Each year brings an increase in the outlay and preparation for, and an advance in the quality and finish of the Greek Theatre productions of the University of California, and each play commands more and more the interest and appreciation of the rest of the world. An open-air performance on an evening in early April. Surely this is typical of California. HOPE'S KISS BY DANIEL SENDRIGGAN At the abominable windows of despair, Oft I've construed the weathers as they fell, Which love's gold paid for and then brought me not; But came thy lips, red speakers of wee words, So ne'er with lips averted stand before, But with molesting kisses haunt the part A FICTITIOUS HISTORY OF THE WORLD BY LIONEL JOSAPHARE CHAPTER V. HE LEAST and most that can be said of Time is that it passes; which is perhaps untrue. Everything else passes. Time, described as accurately as possible, is merely to be mentioned, as Time. Let us all, perforce even Satan, quaff from our most precious goblet to the mystery, Time. It is naught; yet there is not anything that is anything without it. And with it, all comes to naught. Infinity is Infinity is but amazing; eternity is maddening. For in eternity are many oblivions. A child is born, subsequently he may be forgotten. Between such birth and such forgetting he may have been a king obeyed, renowned, adored; may have scattered the world from his throne. Time is nothing, yet it is measured, until it destroys its own measures. It is accused of deadly work, yet is without performance, letting the little visible realities perform their timed lives within it. And so, on this side of oblivion, as we look at the past, time still endured, eternity still being as much before and after, without reckoning the intervals between, and the primitives of humanity ceased their living, one at a time, yet all in all. They had been a dogged race, with here and there among them a few venturing souls. Dogged they were, still human, else the few venturing souls would have died unrequited. In the thousands of succeeding years, the sun and the moon spun their variant lights about the world; the winds whirled their gentle destruction; the rains softly pelted their violence; the dust of ages rose and sank; the wreckage of human ity's uses piled up, rotted and disintegrated. Noble things of the age became the trash of Time. Men had come and wandered; fought, bled, aspired and were forgotten; excepting, nevertheless, that those they begat remembered to beget; and here and there again, each multitude produced, reviled and followed its few venturing souls. For innovators have always been martyrs. In religion, in art, in commonweal, the world has despised, imprisoned and slain its reformers before following them. How often this has been done, we have scant record. Perhaps only a spearhead has remained of a glorious war; perchance a broken skull, of what some divine band of men dreamed of as a message to the world. The descendants and antagonists of Ugwuf inherited his passions, wreaking war as faithfully as others their agriculture. Their persons became more ornate with the achievements of their lives. As art improved the flint-belt, the wearer augmented his attire, crudely at first and innocently, until, after a time, he stood forth in jewel and chain and robe, flourishing a steel sword and retiring to a throne of majesty. The imitators of Pobolo contrived many intrigues and emergencies that the wiseacre of the Lakemen could not have foreseen. His cunning, that brought him next to the chief, with authority over the division of meat, was improved into penetrating systems of politics, to which eloquence could gesticulate and toward which cheers would sound. Lean-face, with other names and other graces, continued to mystify his fellowkind, unmindful of Wah-wah's interviewer and his ten cows. And Wah-wah, whose last mortal semblance was a |