marks of age, but all children at heart--and not an unfriendly
face among them. And out of the confusion, and while I am trying
hard to speak the right word, I seem to hear a voice lifted above
the rest, saying "You have made some of us happy." And so I feel
my heart fluttering and my lips trembling, and I have to how
silently and him away, and hurry back into the obscurity that
fits me best.

Phantoms! Children of dreams! True, my dear Frost; but if you
could see the thousands of letters that have come to me from far
and near, and all fresh from the hearts and hands of children,
and from men and women who have not forgotten how to be children,
you would not wonder at the dream. And such a dream can do no
harm. Insubstantial though it may be, I would not at this hour
exchange it for all the fame won by my mightier brethren of the
pen--whom I most humbly salute.

Measured by the material developments that have compressed
years of experience into the space of a day, thus increasing the
possibilities of life, if not its beauty, fifteen years
constitute the old age of a book. Such a survival might almost be
said to be due to a tiny sluice of green sap under the gray bark.
where it lies in the matter of this book, or what its source if,
indeed, it be really there--is more of a mystery to my middle age
than it was to my prime.

But it would be no mystery at all if this new edition were to be
more popular than the old one. Do you know why? Because you
have taken it under your hand and made it yours. Because you have
breathed the breath of life into these amiable brethren of wood