SEVERAL days passed by. No inspiration came to Wendell. The Pixie had no suggestion to offer, only unsympathetic criticism:—“You might have known that was too subtle for him. He’s no deep thinker. I could have told you.” His mother grew anxious. “You mustn’t study so hard, dear,” she said. “You should have been out playing with the boys instead of poring over that Memorial History of Boston this afternoon. Yes, I know it is fascinating reading, especially the earlier chapters, but you must think of your health, dear.” Cousin Virginia looked at Wendell solicitously, and Wendell knew she meant to be funny again.

This was Saturday evening, and the family had just settled down in the library with the Transcript, each with a section. Alden had the news; Otis, the sporting page; his father was perusing the editorials, his mother was reading the religious items. Cousin Virginia dabbled a few moments in the{59} theatrical columns, like a canary unwilling to get wet all over in his china tub, and then laid down her section, suppressed a yawn, and said,

“Why does all Boston find its greatest dissipation Saturday night in reading the Saturday evening Transcript?”

“Habit, pure habit,” growled Alden, without raising his eyes.

“Not altogether habit,” said his mother, gently and seriously. “The Transcript, Virginia, is quite different from any other paper. It is reliable and conservative and sound.”

“You know, Virginia”—her uncle looked up for a moment with a twinkle in his eye—“good Bostonians always make a point of dying on Friday, so that their obituaries can go into the Saturday evening Transcript.”

“No? That is consistent,” laughed Virginia. “But even the Boston children quote it. I saw the funniest little chap as I was crossing the Common to-day—a short fat little fellow, having a lot of fun with a false beard and whiskers. He was twirling around on one leg, to get dizzy, I suppose, and chanting loudly something like this, that didn’t make any sense:—
“‘The boy—will soon—belong—to me,
Unless—the Trans—cript he—should see.
Ha! Ha!—the ed—ito—rial page
He’ll nev—er read—until—old age!’

Would you believe it? I never would—outside of Boston.{60}”

Wendell listened no further. He could hardly wait for his father to drop the editorial section. What a foolish old Kobold!—giving the whole thing away, just as the Pixie said he always did. Thank goodness!

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{61} 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 qu............