When Pamela Coleman Smith lived in New York a few yeras ago we were accustomed to see such old-time ballds as "Widdicombe Fair", "The Green Bed," and "The Golden Vanity" pictured in a manner appeciative of their old-time quality. These drawings, with others, like the drawings made for "Macbeth", for W.B. Yeats's "Land of Heart's Desire," and the charming play-time pictures of children, won their way to the appreciative for their vivacity and quaintness in the telling as well as for the freshness of color and directness of disign of which this young artist possessed the secret in a notable degree. When she moved to London it bacame a question whether the new enviromnent would develop or destroy the freshness, the spontaneity, the naive charm that owned everything to nature and little or nothing to the schools.

Fortunately she seems to have found in London the environment that even better conserves her inherent tendencies; and it is with the peculiar pleasure of finding something unique that one picks up the little publications of which she has been for a year or more the inspiration. Last year "The Broad Sheet" was published in association with Jack B. Yeats, brother of the Irish poet. It consisted of a single sheet showing two or more drawings, colored by hand; the accompanying verses were as brief as possible, scarcely more than captions.

This year Miss Smith brings out alone a folio of a few pages called "The Green Sheaf", and the prospectus sets forth thus the modest and alluring purposes of the editor:

"My Sheaf is small . . . but it is green. I will gather into my Sheaf all the young, fresh things I can -- pictures, verses, ballads of love and war; tales of pirates and the sea.

"You will find the ballads of the old world in my Sheaf. Are they not green forever.

"Ripe ears are good for bread, but green ears are good for pleasure.

"I hope you will have my Sheaf in your house and like it.

"It wiill stay fresh and green then."

Among the contributors to "The Green Sheaf" are names known on this side as associated with the new Irish literary movement, such as Lady Gregory and W.B. Yeats. Besides these there will be verse and prose by Alex Egerton, Chrsitopher St. John, Cecil French, John Masefield, and pictures by Gordon Craig, the Monsells, W.T. Horon, and Dorothy P. Ward.

But the largest contributor is Miss Smith herself.

(The Lamp, 1903. June.)