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ÆT. 57] dubious characters"—he gives names which I forbear to quote—"who, being suspected of relations with the police, drove the better elements away in disgust, and finally broke up what was left of Morris's organization." With infinite patience, Morris continued for some time yet to bear the demands made on his purse to meet the expenses of the Commonweal; and it was after his removal from the editorship that he contributed to it, from the 11th of January to the 4th of October, 1890, the successive chapters of his romance, "News from Nowhere." In the issues of July and August there was also printed in numbers a lecture by him on the Development of Modern Society. On the 12th of May he reappeared on the stage in support of the fast sinking funds of the journal, taking a part in a one-act play, "The Duchess of Bayswater and Co.," which was performed by members of the League in a hall in Tottenham Court Road. This was one of the last desperate efforts made to restore the League to solvency. Though the Commonweal never followed the example of a sister journal conducted by Communists and Anarchists at Buenos Ayres, for which any payment was purely voluntary, the number of copies sold was dwindling away almost to nothing, and the appeals repeated in nearly every number for renewal of lapsed subscriptions had little effect. As the task of keeping the League together became more impracticable, the interest taken in it by Morris, as a thoroughly practical man of business notwithstanding all his high idealism, also fell away. In July he writes, "I have been somewhat worrited by matters connected with the League, and am like to be more worrited; but somehow or other I don't seem to care much." Vague efforts were made from time to time to promote union with other Socialist bodies, but they were futile. The disinte-