“WHAT will the next story be about?” said the publisher. “I’m not sure that I shall publish the book at all if it’s about Swedish trolls and Genevese cats. Couldn’t you write about something British—a gnome who made 94 not out for Surrey and then went home and drank a bottle of stout?” “I not only can,” said the author, “but I immediately will.”

“There was once,” said the author, “a sprite who thought goloshes and hot water bottles unmanly. He preferred east winds and colds in the head, and being strong and silent (though he sneezed a good deal from time to time), and though he was a pagan himself, he could respect Christianity in others. His name was Puck; he lived at Bexhill.”

“I have been expecting this for some time,” broke in the publisher; “all you do is to take other people’s noble conceptions and distort them. Disguising plagiarism as travesty, you seek to impose on the public. But let me tell you, sir, in the words of the Latin poet, ‘Sunt certi denique fines.’”

“I am sorry to have given offence,” said the author, “particularly as I would have wished to sketch a new version of Puck’s life, when as a result of continued exposure to draughts in what the Americans taught him to call God’s Great Out-at-Elbows he contracted a vivid form of rheumatism. So crippled, he devoted his declining years to Worthing and the pleasures of a bath chair. Not unnaturally in these circumstances he developed a horror of Sussex and of children, and found his only remaining happiness in reading the poems of Mr. Edward Shanks to the local clergy. When he died, as he did shortly after this——”

“I am only surprised,” interrupted the publisher bitterly, “that the clergy survived.”

“Oh,” said the author, “they did not survive long. It is true that their counsel at the trial urged that it was justifiable homicide in self-defence, but the judge quite properly pointed out in his summing-up that they needn’t have listened. But I can see,” went on the author, “that this is not the sort of story of which you were in need. Let me therefore recount to you the true story of Jack and the Beanstalk.”

“I hope that it is not very long,” said the publisher.

“That depends on the method of payment,” replied the author. “If I am paid by the word, of course——”

“Get on with the story,” said the publisher.

“By the side of a slow river in the western parts of a great metropolis there lived a boy named Jack. Though he was so young he was already justly celebrated for his climbing feats. Indeed, the old woman who looked after him was never tired of saying, with a roguish smile at herself in the mirror, ‘C’est un vrai gosse!’ which means in English, ‘He takes after his spiritual grandmother.’

“Jack had climbed all the trees in his own garden and all those in everybody else’s. And then one day he announced that he was going to climb an entirely new tree whose roots are in the heart but whose leaves are in eternity.... There was much discussion among his friends, some saying that he should climb and others that he shouldn’t, and still others (but these were jealous) that it was little better than an Indian rope trick. But Jack was not to be deterred. For he said that he was tired of living among pygmies; he would now climb the Immortal Tree and slay one of the giants and return with his head.

“That night accordingly the tree was planted, and by morning its leaves hid the sky. After a farewell breakfast, at which a good deal of stout was drunk, and at which the Press was well represented, Jack started the ascent. He climbed up and up till he was out of sight. His friends waited about till nightfall, but as he did not return they concluded that he was making a night of it with the giants, and went home to their evening porter and bed.

“Next morning the tree was withered. Some said one thing and some said another. These, that the giants had insisted on Jack’s remaining among them, and these (but these were traducers), that he had fallen to the first giant. The general view, however, was that Jack had burst with chagrin on discovering that, except for himself, there were no giants. But since his departure nobody has ever climbed the beanstalk, for, as they all said, ‘Sunt certi denique fines.’”“That story,” said the publisher, “is worse than the first. That was vulgar, but this has no meaning whatever.”

“You just publish it and see,” said the author.