There used to be a little girl who does not come here any more. She is not dead, for when certain things happen, she stirs slightly where she is, perhaps deep within the air. When the sun falls in a particular way, when graham griddle cakes are baking, when the sky laughs sudden blue after a storm, or the town clock points in its clearest you-will-be-late way at nine in the morning, when the moonlight is on the midnight and nothing moves--then, somewhere beyond sealed doors, the little girl says something, and it is plain that she is here all the time. You little child who never have died, in these stories I am trying to tell you that now I come near to understanding you. I see you still, with your over-long hair and your over-much chattering, your naughtiness and your dreams. I know the qualities that made you disagreeable and those that made you dear, and I look on you somewhat as spirit looks on spirit, understanding from within. I wish that we could live it again, you and I--not all of it, by any means, and not for a serious business; but now and then, for a joy and for an idleness. And this book is a way of trying to do it over again, together. Will you care to come from the quiet where you are, near to me and yet remote? I think that you will come, for you were wont untiringly to wonder about me. And now here I am, come true, so faintly like her whom you dreamed, yet so like you yourself, your child, fruit of your spirit, you little shadowy mother.... If only words were moments And I knew where they fly, I’d make a tale of time itself To tell you by and bye. If only words were fathoms That let us by for pearls, I’d make a story ocean-strange For little boys and girls. But words are only shadow things. I summon all I may. Oh, see--they try to spell out Life! Let’s act it, like a play. When I was a Little Girl I IN THOSE DAYS In those days time always bothered us. It went fast or it went slow, with no one interfering. It was impossible to hurry it or to hold it back. “Only ten weeks more,” we invariably said glibly, when the Spring term began. “Just think! We’ve--got--t-e-n--weeks!” we told one another at the beginning of vacation, what time we came home with our books, chanting it:-- “_No more Latin, No more French, No more sitting on a hard wood bench._” --both chorally and antiphonally chanting it. Yet, in spite of every encouragement, the Spring term lasted immeasurably and the Summer vacation melted. It was the kindred difference of experience respectively presented by a bowl of hot ginger tea and an equal bulk of ice-cream. In other ways time was extraordinary. We used to play with it: “Now is now. But now that other Now is gone and a Then is now. How did it do it? How do all the Nows begin?” “When is the party?” we had sometimes inquired. “To-morrow,” we would be told.