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Author of "Little Citizens," "Wards of Liberty," "The Golden Season," Etc., Etc.
[Illustration: Together they retrieved it]
Copyright, 1910, by Charles Scribner's Sons
Together they retrieved it _Frontispiece_
"I guess games in gardens ain't so awful healthy for somebody," said Yetta 32
"I never in my world seen how they all makes" 60
"I must refuse to translate it to you" 70
She staggered back into a chair, fortunately of heavy architecture, and stared at the apparition before her 140
Patrick was making discipline impossible 178
"What you think we got to our house?" 198
Rosie threw herself into a very ecstasy of her art 246
An ideal is like a golden pheasant. As soon as the hunter comes up with one he kills it in more or less bloody fashion, tears its feathers off, absorbs what he can of it, and then sets out, refreshed, in pursuit of another. Or if, being a tender-hearted hunter, he tries to keep it in a cage to tame it, to teach it, to show it to his friends, it very soon loses its original character so that beholders disparagingly exclaim: "Why, it's only a little brown hen! Hardly worth the trouble of hunting."
But among the pheasant and the trout of the ideal hunting-fields the true relation between home and school flits ever along the horizon, a very sea-serpent. Every one has heard of it. Some have pursued it. Some even vow they have seen it. Almost any one is ready to describe it. Expeditions have gone forth in search of it, and have come back empty-handed or with the haziest of kodak films. And the most conservative of insurance companies would consider it a safe "risk."