Few modern writers have given their readers more genuine delight than Frank R. Stockton (1834-1902). The most absurd and illogical situations and characters are presented with an air of such quiet sincerity that one refuses to question the reality of it all. _Rudder Grange_ established his reputation in 1879, and was followed by a long list of stories of delightfully impossible events. For several years Stockton was one of the editors of _St. Nicholas_, and some of his stories for children, of first quality in both form and content, deserve to be better known than they are. Five of the best of them for school use have been brought together in a little volume called _Fanciful Tales_. One of these, "Old Pipes and the Dryad," is given here by permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. (Copyright, 1894.) This story is based upon the old mythical belief that the trees are inhabited by guardian deities known as dryads, or hamadryads. To injure a tree meant to injure its guardian spirit and was almost certain to insure disaster for the guilty person. On the other hand, to protect a tree would bring some token of appreciation from the dryad. A good introduction to the story would be the telling of one or two of these tree myths as found in Gayley's _Classic Myths_ or Bulfinch's _Age of Fable_. A fine literary version of one of them is in Lowell's "Rhoecus." But the beautiful and kindly helpfulness of Old Pipes will carry its own message whether one knows any mythology or not. OLD PIPES AND THE DRYAD FRANK R. STOCKTON A Mountain brook ran through a little village. Over the brook there was a narrow bridge, and from the bridge a foot-path led out from the village and up the hill-side, to the cottage of Old Pipes and his mother. For many, many years Old Pipes had been employed by the villagers to pipe the cattle down from the hills. Every afternoon, an hour before sunset, he would sit on a rock in front of his cottage and play on his pipes. Then all the flocks and herds that were grazing on the mountains would hear him, wherever they might happen to be, and would come down to the village--the cows by the easiest paths, the sheep by those not quite so easy, and the goats by the steep and rocky ways that were hardest of all.