THE MIND IN LEADING STRINGS. Let us endeavor to clearly understand what it is that the writer of imaginative literature does for us; he would put our minds "into leading strings." And more than any other the imaginative writer takes possession of us. Think of such an author as Rider Haggard. The reader who delights in his books is not a mere spectator of the imaginary adventures which are described. He really enjoys "a projection of his own soul," "an extension of his own life." Now he is Allan Quartermain, shooting with ccol and deadly precision in the moment of some great peril; and now he is Umslopogaas, that splendid though ill-clad savage, croon ing songs of blood to his battle-axe, or using it with iearful effect upon the skulls of his foes. So also it is not Horatius who stands at the bridge—it is not he, who,

Like a wild cat mad with wounds,

springs right at Astur's face—it is the reader himself who does these things. So it is with the love Btory : the reader himself or herself enacts that of which the book speaks. And there is no harm but rather good in this, so long as these imaginary activities are good ones. But should the reader be invited, as he often is in these days, to imaginatively participate in, or perpetrate some sexual sin, what then ? Well, as Captain Busby might say, "the bearing of these remarks lies iu the application of them." Another very important thing which the creator of imaginary characters does for us is this: he enlarges the circle of our acquaintance. The man who introduces us to evil personages in the pages of a novel or a poem, is on a level with the person who introduces us to undesir able companions of the flesh and blood sort. While he who takes us into good society, through the medium of his book, is as much our benefactor as is the person who does so in other ways ; for the men and women of fiction and of verse become real persons to the sympathetic reader. 