THE children’s room of the Library was very still. Once in a while a murmur arose at the delivery desk, or some squeaky-shoed small feet crossed from open shelves to reading table. Occasionally a helpful child leaned across to another and whispered, “That’s a dandy book. Have you read the rest of them?” But all of these minor sounds were blended into the general effect of stillness and seclusion; and they did not even reach the ears of a small boy named Wendell, who bent over a large volume on one of the low round tables. He did not hear the footfalls nor the murmurs; he knew nothing of the rumble of traffic that rose through the windows; he was not even conscious of gathering dusk, though the librarian began to snap on lights in dark corners. Wendell read on and on, giving an excellent imitation of a bookworm.{2}
Absorbed as he was in his book, you probably picture him as a slight, pale little chap, somewhat underweight for his ten years, with pale cheeks, a bulging brow, large horn spectacles, completely immersed in a volume of Emerson’s Essays. Not at all. He had a round, brown face, a strong, lithe body, excellent arm and leg muscles, and nice brown eyes that were in unusually good condition because he never overworked them on school books. He had never opened Emerson’s Essays in his life, and the large volume that just now held his attention so completely was a book of fairy tales.
Wendell never read anything but fairy tales, unless it happened to be “required reading” at the select school for boys that he attended. In fairy tales he reveled. He read them in bed with the light on at night. He read them before breakfast and thus made himself late at school. He hid them behind his geography in study periods. He took them to Sunday school till his teacher found it out. He read them in the street when he went on an errand and greatly irritated traffic policemen by trying to cross the street, reading. Altogether, it was proverbial in Wendell’s family that he could always be kept out of mischief by a fairy tale. But oh! what low marks he did get in school!
For he didn’t like to study. He liked baseball and swimming and roller-skating, but he didn’t like the capitals of the United States, nor dates, nor fractions. Particularly he didn’t like fractions.
Thoroughly entranced, he read on till another boy reached across in front of his page to get a book{3} lying on the table. The interruption roused him. He glanced up, saw that the lights were on and the afternoon waning, reluctantly rose and returned his volume to the shelves, and sauntered out with two books of fairy tales under his arm.
He strolled through the upper corridor, with an approving glance at the great panel of the Muses, who looked to him like fairies on a large scale; but his goal was the delivery room at the other end, with its wonderful paintings of Sir Galahad and the Quest of the Holy Grail, illustrations de luxe of one of Wendell’s favorite folk tales. Long he lingered over Sir Galahad arriving at the Castle of the Maidens, and long he gazed on the old spellbound king. He sighed deeply as he left the room at length. Oh, to have lived in those days!
Through a cross street he hurried along to the Esplanade. Here was fairy land indeed, had Wendell but had eyes to see it! The sunset glow had not yet faded from behind the classic buildings on the river front, and twin necklaces of lights were strung between city and city. But it all seemed to the boy depressingly modern and unromantic. No suggestion to him of fairies or giants or witches or wishes. He walked along, still under the spell of his Library reading, regretting that there was not enough light to read as he walked, hurrying home to open his fairy books.
From the Embankment, he turned into an old-fashioned street on the slope of Beacon Hill, and began to climb the heights. His great-great-grandfather had lived on that street, in Wendell’s present{4} home, in the early days when fashion first built up the Hill. His great grandfather and his grandfather and his father, in turn, had lived there through many changes, as fickle fashion turned to newer avenues. As Wendell paused in front of his house,—a stern, square front, with a door whose solidity and heavy brass knocker and sentinel sidelights gave the impression that it had been put there to keep people out instead of to let them in,—he was hailed by a friend across the street.
Sammy Davis’ father had a name that ended in idsky when he lived in Russia; but after he came to America and moved into one floor of the decadent mansion next to Wendell’s, the family had decided to give an American twist to the name. So Davis it had become.
Sammy Davis crossed to Wendell.
“Where yer been?”
“Library.”
“Get a book?”
“Yep.”
“Lessee it.”
Sammy reached for the two books, grabbed them. Wendell grabbed in turn. Perfectly willing he was, of course, to show Sammy the books, but who doesn’t resent having things grabbed? Sammy ran across the street; Wendell followed, chased, ducked when Sammy dodged. There was an upright stone post at the inner edge of the sidewalk, barring vehicles from entering a narrow blind court that opened opposite Wendell’s house. Sammy dodged behind this, then out again, ran around in a circle and back{5} to the post to dodge once more, then ran out again, then back to the post. The chase was prolonged and I suppose that they encircled that post a dozen times.
When Wendell at length secured both books, he vaulted up and sat on top of the post, which was roughly hewn and small on top and not so very comfortable. Still, you could stick on.
“I’ll tell you, Sammy,” he said. “You come over to-night, and we’ll each read one—oh Jehoshaphat!” He had suddenly remembered his home work,—a double allowance of fractions because he had failed to-day.
“Make it to-morrow night, Sammy,” he said. “I’ve got home work to-night.”
A window on the fourth floor above was raised, a frowsy head stuck out. “Sammee!” called a strident voice. “Come in and eat.”
“So long. Sorry to leave you,” said Sammy, and departed upward, while Wendell sat and mused on the post. Once more he drifted away into memories of fairy tales. At length he shook himself with a heartfelt though silent, “Gee whiz! I wish I were living in a fairy story right now, here in Boston,” and slid down and went in to dinner.
Wendell’s family consisted of his father and mother and two older brothers, Alden and Otis. Just now there was also a visiting relative, Cousin Virginia, a sprightly young lady from New York, who tolerated Boston because it was only five hours from her delightful home town. She seemed to live in a constant state of amusement at things that{6} Wendell’s people didn’t consider funny at all. Her greeting this time to Wendell was,
“Well, Ralph Waldo Theocritus Shakespeare, how’s the Public Library to-day?”
Wendell didn’t see anything funny in that. He grunted.
“Did you happen to see that interesting new volume of correspondence between Socrates and Lady Jane Grey?”
Wendell didn’t even know that this was intended to be funny.
“I was reading fairy stories,” he said.
“Shocking!” said Cousin Virginia. “A descendant of the Puritans!”
“As to that,” broke in Wendell’s brother Alden, who was a Junior at Harvard, specializing in Original Sources, “the Puritans had some imagination. Look at witchcraft. Look at the Wishing Stone.”
“What wishing stone?” asked Cousin Virginia. “I’ve seen the kind they set in a ring on a girl’s third finger. Do you mean that kind?”
This bit of levity fell flat.
“The Wishing Stone,[A]” said Alden, “was a projecting boulder in the Common, somewhere near the present junction of the Beacon Street mall and the Oliver Wendell Holmes walk. There was a tradition that if one walked or ran nine times around the stone and then stood or sat on it and silently made a wish, the wish would come true.”
[A] Winsor’s Memorial History of Boston, vol. I., p. 554.
“And here you’ve shown me all the sights of Boston and left that out!” cried Cousin Virginia.{7} “Why, it’s much more interesting than Bunker Hill Monument. Let us hie us thither by moonlight as soon as we finish dinner. Careful, Wendell; if your eyes should pop right out, you couldn’t put them back.”
“The stone,” said Alden, “is no longer there.”
“Oh, where is it, Alden?” cried Wendell.
“According to the early diarists,” returned Alden, “most of those boulders on the Common were used for building stone from time to time. I doubt whether its history could possibly be traced.”
“Well, why couldn’t they hang on to it when they had it?” said Wendell in deep disappointment. Then he went up to his room to do his home work,—that sad double lot of fractions.