too, he was a boy whose parents were raising him for their own
purposes. As it is, all gnawed up in this fashion and deceased
besides, he loses his attractions for everyone except the undertaker.
The fox presumably has an attack of acute indigestion. And there
you are! Compare the moral of this with the moral of any one of
the Old Cap Collier series, where virtue comes into its own and
sanity is prevalent throughout and vice gets what it deserves, and
all.

In McGuffey's Third Reader, I think it was, occurred that story
about the small boy who lived in Holland among the dikes and dams,
and one evening he went across the country to carry a few illustrated
post cards or some equally suitable gift to a poor blind man, and
on his way back home in the twilight he discovered a leak in the
sea wall. If he went for help the breach might widen while he was
gone and the whole structure give way, and then the sea would come
roaring in, carrying death and destruction and windmills and wooden
shoes and pineapple cheeses on its crest. At least, this is the
inference one gathers from reading Mr. McGuffey's account of the
affair.

So what does the quick-witted youngster do? He shoves his little
arm in the crevice on the inner side, where already the water is
trickling through, thus blocking the leak. All night long he
stands there, one small, half-frozen Dutch boy holding back the
entire North Atlantic. Not until centuries later, when Judge Alton
B. Parker runs for president against Colonel Roosevelt and is
defeated practically by acclamation is there to be presented so
historic and so magnificent an example of a contest against
tremendous odds. In the morning a peasant, going out to mow the