It's Your Fairy Tale, You KnowJackson, Elizabeth Rhodes
Science
It's Your Fairy Tale, You Know
Jackson, Elizabeth Rhodes
Boston (Mass.) -- Juvenile fiction; Boys -- Juvenile fiction; Fairy tales
Wendell remembered how his nature study teacher had told the class that
even the smallest and humblest of creatures has undoubtedly some place
in the scheme of things. Even Cousin Virginia had a use in the world, it
would seem.
After a long while, Wendell’s father laid down the page, and Wendell
picked it up inconspicuously. But not too inconspicuously for Cousin
Virginia’s keen laughing eyes.
“Nice little Boston, Wendell,” she whispered to him. “The family picture
is complete.”
Wendell read the page through carefully, every word,--the weather, the
leaders, the paragraphs, the Nomad, Letters to the Editor, Facts and
Fancies, the deaths, and the advertisements. Not one word that gave
light on the definition of Boston. Wendell sat in a brown study.
Presently, he went up to his room, hoping the Pixie would be there, and
sure enough, he was.
“Sounds very probable,” was the Pixie’s comment, after Wendell had laid
the facts before him. “Of course it doesn’t have to be to-night’s
_Transcript_. In fact it couldn’t be. It must have been before he put
the riddle to you, anyway. I shouldn’t be surprised if you’d hit the
bull’s-eye this time. That’s just the kind of riddle he’d
propose--something he read in the paper! That’s just the kind of mind
he has. There are some people like that, you know, who think if they see
it ‘in the paper,’ it must be true.”
“Then,” said Wendell, “you’d advise looking through the old
_Transcripts_ till I find it. I could do that, I guess, at the
_Transcript_ office.”
He had to wait till Monday, of course. Monday afternoon, he went down
directly from school to the _Transcript_ building, which, fitly enough,
occupies the historic site of the birthplace of Benjamin Franklin, the
great journalist. The _Transcript_ people were most courteous and put
their files at Wendell’s disposal. Through editorial page after page
floundered Wendell, and if only he could have understood and remembered
half that he read, he would have emerged from the newspaper office a
complete specimen of the well-read Boston boy, such as his Cousin
Virginia pretended to believe he already was. It was nearly dusk before
his heart was lightened by a definition of Boston, this one from the pen
of Oliver Herford, whom of course Wendell recognized as a delightful
contributor to _St. Nicholas_. Mr. Herford, it seemed, was originally a
Boston man, though now dwelling in the outlands, and, said Mr. Herford,
“Boston is a center of gravity almost entirely surrounded by Newtons.”
It sounded like sense, though naturally Wendell didn’t quite understand
it at first. After he had read it several times, he began to see the
point. Encouraged by the views the Pixie had expressed, Wendell decided
to stop right in at the Kobold’s on the way home. If he wasn’t on the
slope of the hill, or if he remained invisible there, doubtless the
spell that worked before would bring him to light again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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