"It _is_ wonderful, isn't it, Mary? How would you like to see twenty, thirty, forty, oh, a hundred dragons doing this all at once. We can if we want to. All we have to do is to go over to Lagunita some morning early, very early, just a little after sunrise--for that is their favorite time--and we shall see scores of dragons crawling up out of the water on stones, plants, sticks, anything convenient, and sloughing off their dirty, dark, old skins and coming out in their beautiful iridescent green and violet and purple new skins, with their long slender body and great flashing wings. They sit quietly on the stones and plant-stems until the warm rising sun dries them and their new skins get firm and all nicely fitted, and then they begin their new life,--wheeling and dashing over the lake and among the hills and bushes and above the grasses and grain along the banks. Like eagles and hawks they are seeking their prey. Watch that little gnat buzzing there in the air. A flying dragon swoops by and there is no gnat there any longer. It has been caught in the curious basket-like trap which the dragon makes with its spiny legs all held together, and it is being crushed and chewed by the great jaws. Still a dragon, you see, for all of its new beauty!" Mary muses. "Not all beautiful things in the world are good, are they?" she murmurs. "Mary, you are a philosopher," I say. * * * * * As I read this over I realize quite as keenly, I hope, as you do, my reader, how little there is in this story. And yet finding out this little was real pleasure to Mary and me. Now we must perforce estimate the pleasures and pains, the likes and dislikes, of other people by our own. And however untrue this estimate may be for any one other person, it must be fairly true for any considerable number of persons. Therefore--and this is the reason for putting down our simple experiences with the insects for other people to read and perhaps to be stirred by to see and do similar things--therefore, I say, other people, some other people, also must be able to get pleasure from what we do. Now if there is any way and any means of getting clean pleasure into the crowded days of our living, then that way and means should be suggested and opened to as many as possible. Mary and I, you see, have the real proselyting spirit; we are missionaries of the religion of the unroofed temples. And we want all to be saved! So we give testimony willingly of our own experiences, and of the saving grace of our belief. We have no names for our idols, nor any formulation of our creed. But in various voice and word we do gladly confess over and over again the reality of the happiness that comes to us from our hours with the lowly world that we are coming to know better and better. And any one of these happy hours may contain no more than the little that has been told in this story of the "Dragon of Lagunita," and yet be really and truly a happy hour.