Another Theme for H. G. Wells The best seller of the season has undoubtedly been the pseudo-scientific "Outline of History" by the brilliant and prolific novelist who has written so many entertaining books. It can be said truly of him as in Johnson's sonorous epitaph of Goldsmith: "Hil Nullum quod quod tetigit non ornavit."

He has surprised and charmed us so often, even when we did not take him seriously, that we have become accustomed to his vagaries. It is not given to many writers to cover, or to attempt to cover the whole range of science and literature, psychology and theology. He has given us a new philosophy of life, a new religion, a new sociology -in fact, one cannot recall any specialty on which he has not spoken authoritatively. He has analyzed the soul of a bishop, as well as traced the primitive ideas of the cave

man.

Mr. Wells has written many noble words. We cannot forget his war books, for every mourner who has had the experience of Mr. Britling has felt that the mystery of pain and sorrow had been solved when he learned its lesson.

We like H. G. W. and he has no rival in our affections. That he will continue to be as original and as industrious as ever for years to come is the hope of his admiring public. Incidentally one hopes that he may be chastened in his mature years and be able to look back on Bolshevism, as on War, as a bad dream. He will always be a futurist, and look forward to universal peace, even when thoughtful soldiers, from General Wood to the Chief of the German General Staff, pronounce it a "beautiful dream." Assuming that our novelist will continue to evolve new and startling theories (he has not yet tackled Einstein), may we modestly suggest that a rich field lies before him ready for his trenchant pen, or rather plow, the medicine of the future.

Doubtless his attention has been directed to endocrines, but the possibilities of this subject from the standpoint of the novelist (and poet?) apparently have not yet dawned upon him. Requiring in a high degree the exercise of the scientific imagination, as well as patient research, we can conceive that it will appeal to such a mind as his as peculiarly fascinating, since it opens up a wide range of prophecy with regard to the future of the race, when the physiology and pathology of the ductless glands are thoroughly understood (not in our generation) and all human aberration, mental, moral and physical, will be eliminated by the judicious use of the proper tabloids.

All died but one, a cunning thing,
With well marked tail and head;
He taught it to say yes and no
And fed it ginger-bread.

Her face grew quite intelligent,
More and more words she said.

Her eyes were bright, her skin was white,
Her hair was Titian red.

And soon his soul became absorbed;

He learned her lingo, too.

They talked of prehistoric days
When all the world was new.

He questioned her on many things
About that bygone time.
Recalled her prehistoric life,
When Earth was mud and slime.

They spoke of the gigantic ferns
That covered all the earth,

And how man came, and how he was
A chimpanzee at birth.

Her little head was quite well read,
Her knowledge up to date,
And every day he longed to say,
Oh come and be my mate!

Now this went on for most a year,
And daily his face grew pale,

He had fallen in love with a microbe
That had a head and tail.

Now there's a difference in microbes,

The ones that we have today,

Have heads that are tails and tails that are heads, You can turn them either way,

But the germs of the Paleolithic age

Were a very superior kind,

They had eyes and ears and shed real tears,

And to love were by no means blind.

But how could he marry a Streptococc,

No matter how fair she be?

He, a Professor who taught a class.

In bacter-i-ol-o-ogee!

But the fair bacilla fairer grew

And greater as days went by,

But his days were numbered in numbers few,
For his time had come for to die.

He fed his darling on bon-bons sweet,
And barrels of Roman punch,

Till one sad day, Nature had her way,

And she gobbled him up with her lunch!

You have asked me, she said, as she choked on his head,
You have asked me your mate to be,

And elope with you, which I mean to do,
When you're safe in my "Tummy," you see!

Oh men who discover, and men who tread

In the tracks of Nature's feet,

Forever befare of the Titian hair

That grows on a microbe sweet,

And seek not to pry, with too eager an eye,

In the secrets the Past may hold,

Or your fate may be, what today you see,
Was the fate of our hero bold.

His class though it wept, the memory kept,
Of his terrible doom, and placed
Over a tomb and its somber gloom,
A Man and a Germ, embraced!

But the Legislators who guard the State,
From indelicate sight and sound,

They feared that the group might convey the croup,
And in cheese-cloth they wrapped it round,

But no one can say, to this very day,

Where the fair bacilla went,

She escaped in the night from mortal sight,
And also from mortal scent,

But under that massive marble group
They inscribed o'er his grassy bed,
This legend, "He loved a microbe,
And her hair was Titian red."
Mourn not for him, 'tis honor great-
Too great for a human worm,

To die as he did and be lost and hid
In an Antediluvian Germ!

EDWARD WILLARD WATSON.