And thro’ the leaves uplifted, I saw, a moment’s space, Where dogwood blossoms drifted— A dryad’s laughing face. [Illustration] LEISURE HOURS For Conference Between the Magazine and its Readers. Let us be mutually helpful. In this, the initial number of BOB TAYLOR’S MAGAZINE, one of the dominant thoughts in our minds is that of friendly reciprocity. You would not have subscribed to this periodical, we take it, were you not friendly to it and to its editor. We wish not merely to amuse you, but to help you; and we wish you to help us, that, through us, you may help your own people, your own state and section and the whole country. To this end we invite, for the use of this department, communications on all subjects of unusual interest and importance, such as: Prose and poetry of sentiment, fact and fancy. Forgotten or unpublished bits of history and tradition. Anecdotes of famous men and women, and of quaint and curious occurrences. The best short stories and tales you have heard or read, if unusual or unfamiliar. Suggestions for the special benefit of BOB TAYLOR’S MAGAZINE, how it may be improved, what it should contain, what it should omit. Write us these things that all may profit by something of transcendent interest to each. Also ask questions of interest and importance on any subject. If we can answer them, we will do so; and if we can’t answer them, we will invite our readers to do so. Address all such communications to Leisure Hours Department of BOB TAYLOR’S MAGAZINE. What a mine of hidden wealth there is in the unrecorded legends of the South and the Southwest! What tales of the cavaliers of the Old Dominion, of the mountaineers, of those modern argonauts who braved in the wilderness more and greater dangers than did the fabled followers of Jason, and whose descendants are now enjoying the golden fleece which eluded their grasp! What of Oglethorpe, and Boone and Crockett, Whitefield and Doak, Jackson and Sam Houston, Lafitte and Bowie and Burr; of Lost Island, Barrancas and the Everglades; of the Creoles and Acadians, and the thousand and one thrilling tales of the treacherous red man! All these, and more, offer to the present and the future story teller an inexhaustible supply of the purest ore for transmuting, fusing genius. And what gems of prose and poetry lie unnoticed in the literature of the South! While other sections have given wide and constant publicity to their writers and their writers’ productions (and it was their duty to do so), the poets and the masters of prose of the South of former days lie in forgotten graves and the dust of the library gathers thick upon their unopened volumes.