"I wanted a toy soldier and here is the finest one I ever saw," Harold said; and he slipped the soldier inside his coat and started on, for he was going to school. The Toy Soldier lay close to Harold's watch that was tick, tick, ticking the time away, but Harold loitered, and at last he stopped to play a game of marbles with another little boy whom he met. "I don't care if I am late for school," he said. "Oho!" thought the Toy Soldier, and as the two little boys played he dropped out from under Harold's coat and into the gutter. When Harold reached school, late, the Toy Soldier was gone. Joe found the Toy Soldier in the gutter and ran home with him to his mother. "I have a Toy Soldier!" he said. "How brave he looks," said Joe's mother. All the rest of the day the Toy Soldier went about with Joe and listened to what he said and watched what he did. "I can't go to the grocer's; I'm afraid of his dog." "I can't put in that nail. I am afraid that the hammer will slip and hit my finger." This was what the Toy Soldier heard. Then it was Joe's bedtime, and the Toy Soldier went upstairs with him to bed, but Joe cried all the way. "I'm afraid of the dark!" he said. When Joe was asleep the Toy Soldier slipped out of his hand and fell into a scrap basket. He knew very well that he couldn't stay with a child who was a coward. No one saw the Toy Soldier when the basket was emptied in the morning. He went with the scraps into a huge bag, and then into a wagon, and then into a factory where men sorted the cloth to make it into paper. One of these men found the Toy Soldier and took him home to his little boy, who was lame and had to stay alone all day. "Has it been a good day, John?" his father asked. "Oh, yes!" laughed John as he hugged the Toy Soldier. "You have my supper ready just in time," his father said, watching the soup bubbling in a shining pot on the stove. "And I cleaned a little and set the table," John said. "Has your back hurt you very much to-day?" asked his father. "A little, but I don't mind that," John said. "See how fine the Toy Soldier looks standing on the table!" "Oho!" thought the Toy Soldier, "now I have found a place where I can stay. Here is another soldier, cheerful and willing to work, and brave!" WHAT HAPPENED TO DUMPS BY CAROLYN SHERWIN BAILEY Once upon a time there was a queer little elf named Dumps, who lived all by himself in a dark little house down in a valley. Ever since he could remember, things had gone wrong with him. He shivered in the cold and kicked the coal bucket when the fire wouldn't burn. He howled when he stumbled over his own dinner pots that he had left in the middle of the floor; and he stood in his front door and scowled when other happy elves went by without speaking to him. He and his family had lived like that for years. When any elf wanted to describe something very sad he would say it was "Down in the Dumps." And so Dumps went on without a single happy day.