down his throat to a comfortable point to swallow. Yes, it certainly was convenient.

It took so much time to fill their stomachs that they did not travel far that night. The next day they spent under an old board, where they buried themselves in the soft earth by digging holes with their stout hind feet and backing in at the same time until just their noses and eyes showed at the doorways, ready to snap up any foolish bugs or worms who might seek shelter in their hiding-place. It was such a comfortable place that they stayed several days, going out nights to hunt, and returning at daylight.

It was while they were there that old Mr. Toad complained that his skin was getting too tight and uncomfortable, and announced that he was going to change it. And he did. It was a pretty tiresome process, and required a lot of wriggling and kicking, but little by little the old skin split in places and Mr. Toad worked it off, getting his hind legs free first, and later his hands, using the latter to pull the last of it from the top of his head over his eyes. And, as fast as he worked it loose, he swallowed it!

"Now I feel better," said he, as with a final gulp he swallowed the last of his old suit. Tommy was n't sure that he looked any better, for the new skin looked very much like the old one; but he did n't say so.

Tommy found that he needed four good meals a day, and filling his stomach took most of his time when he was n't resting. Cutworms he found especially to his liking, and it was astonishing how many he could eat in a night. Caterpillars of many kinds helped out, and it was great fun to sit beside an ant-hill and snap up the busy workers as they came out.

But, beside their daily foraging, there was plenty of excitement, as when a rustling warned them that a snake was near, or a shadow on the grass told them that a hawk was sailing overhead. At those times they simply sat perfectly still, and looked so much like little lumps of earth that they were not seen at all, or, if they were, they were not recognized. Instead of drinking, they soaked water in through the skin. To have a dry skin was to be terribly uncomfortable, and that is why they always sought shelter during the sunny hours.

At last came a rainy day. "Toad weather! Perfect toad weather!" exclaimed old Mr. Toad. "This is the day to travel."

So once more they took up their journey in a leisurely way. A little past noon, the clouds

cleared away and the sun came out bright. "Time to get under cover," grunted old Mr. Toad, and led the way to a great gray rock beside the Lone Little Path and crawled under the edge of it. Tommy was just going to follow-when something happened! He was n't a toad at all-just a freckle-faced boy sitting on the wishing-stone. He pinched himself to make sure. Then he looked under the edge of the wishing-stone for old Mr. Toad. He was n't there. Gradually he remembered that he had seen old Mr. Toad disappearing around a turn in the Lone Little Path, going hoppity-hop-hop-hop, as if he had something on his mind.

"And I thought that there was nothing interesting about a toad!" muttered Tommy. "I wonder if it's all true. I believe I'll run down to the Smiling Pool and just see if that is where Mr. Toad really was going. He must have about reached there by this time."

He jumped to his feet and ran down the Lone Little Path. As he drew near the Smiling Pool, he stopped to listen to the joyous chorus rising from it. He had always thought of the singers as just "peepers," or frogs. Now, for the first time, he noticed that there were different voices. Just ahead of him he saw something moving. It was old Mr. Toad. Softly, very softly, Tommy followed and saw him jump into the shallow water. Carefully he tiptoed nearer and watched. Presently old Mr. Toad's throat began to swell and swell, until it was bigger than his head. Then he began to sing. It was only a couple of notes, tremulous and wonderfully sweet, and so expressive of joy and gladness that Tommy felt. his own heart swell with happiness.

"It is true!" he cried. "And all the rest must be true. And I said there was nothing beautiful about a toad, when all the time he has the most wonderful eyes and the sweetest voice I 've ever heard. It must be true about that queer tongue, and the way he sheds his skin. I'm going to watch and see for myself. Why, I've known old Mr. Toad all my life, and thought him just a common fellow, when all the time he is just wonderful! I'm glad I 've been a toad. Of course there is nothing like being a boy, but I 'd rather be a toad than some other things I 've been on the old wishing-stone. I'm going to get all the toads I can to live in my garden this summer."

And that is just what Tommy did do, with the result that he had one of the best gardens anywhere around. And nobody knew why but Tommy-and his friends, the toads.

SELMA LAGERLÖF, SWEDISH GENIUS In an old rectory called Mårbacka, in Värmland, Sweden, a little girl, who, if not sickly, was still by no means robust, would refuse to play the rough outdoor games that delighted her brothers and sisters, preferring to sit in the house, by the stove in winter or the open window in summer, and listen to stories.

Stories told by old women who came in to chat with the mistress, and who had strange ghost stories to tell, legends of the old superintendent of the foundries, a dark man, who was said to have driven about the country with a team of black bulls harnessed to his cart, and whom the Evil One would visit of an evening, sitting in the rocker and rocking back and forth while the superintendent's wife, who was as peculiar as her husband, would play on the piano.

Stories told by old army captains, now so poor that their clothes were shabby, who would spend weeks visiting in the rectory, and who, their memories unlocked by warmth and good cheer, would lean back comfortably and tell of the days when they were young, and danced with the prettiest girls, and were chased by wolves across the wide plains covered with snow. And girls would come with their own stories, or with others told them by their grandmothers, and from the neighboring homestead stories drifted in, stories that had to do with the country roundabout, and the folks who had lived there a century past.

Yes, it was a great place for stories. The northland loves to tell them in the long, long winter evenings, when curtains are drawn against the cold searching of the winds that are so strong they shake the walls of the stoutest houses, and that come piled full of snow. No warm and sunny land ever tells such wonderful tales as the northland.

Mårbacka itself was a small place standing snugly under huge trees in the midst of the beautiful Värmland province, where brooks run gaily down the green hills in spring and summer and autumn, and freeze into fantastic ice-forms at the first breath of winter. Sunny fields and fine forests, pretty farms and villages, mills on the edge of the streams with their arms turning with creakings and complaints while the golden grain turns to white flour. A lovely country! And the old rectory a sweet place, where there was never

And also writing stories. Yes, that she did very steadily. But she did not think of writing those that she heard from her friends and neighbors. No, indeed! Those were stories any one could tell. She preferred to write in the manner of Sir Walter Scott, or the Arabian Nights, or other romantic, far-off tale-tellers. She wrote in verse; she wrote plays; she set down long romances. And then she waited for fame and fortune, which were to come, so she tells us, in the form of a stranger who would be struck with the power and beauty of her work, and offer to publish it for the admiration of the world.

But of course, since hers was a true story, the stranger did not come. And so she grew tired of

waiting; and since, moreover, it was necessary that she should set about making' a living, she went away at twenty-two to Stockholm, to learn to be a teacher. And then she was so busy that she had to stop writing. But back in her soul there was still the desire to be an author. However, she had no real notion what the story she wanted so much to tell was, nor where she was to find it.

Then something wonderful happened. For she had been only two months in Stockholm, and was walking home from the lecture-room one autumn afternoon, thinking over the lecture, which had been about two of Sweden's writers, when suddenly a great thought flashed into her mind. Why was not the story of Värmland, the legends and the personal adventures and the homestead life, all that woven mass she knew so well, why was not that the story?

Instantly she understood that this was indeed her story. And so great was the effect of the discovery on her that the street rose and sank, rose and sank, before her eyes, as she tells us herself. When it settled again, and she saw the passers-by going calmly along as though nothing at all had happened, she stared at them astonished.

From that exciting moment, Selma Lagerlöf never forgot that she was to write the story of Värmland. But it took many years for her to do it. Yet the years were not wasted. For they each brought her more of the story, her father telling her of a man he had known in his youth, who had every charm of mind and body and temperament and was universally beloved and admired, but who never did anything with all his gifts but waste them and himself. He was the very figure for her hero. And his name came suddenly to her mind, as though it were really his, and not an imaginary name: Gösta Berling, that was his name, and the story should be called "The Saga of Gösta Berling."

First she began to write it in the verse form, like the old sagas. But that did not work. That was not the way this story wanted to be told. It took several years to get the first chapter written at all. And several more before it had been cut down from forty pages to nine, and another added to it. The book was begun.

We cannot follow all the adventures of "Gösta Berling" in getting written. Suffice it that when a prize was offered by the "Idun," a Swedish magazine, in the spring of 1890, for short novelettes, Selma Lagerlöf decided to send in the first five chapters of her book, which made a story in themselves. She had to work very hard to get the chapters finished, sitting up all night long to

write the last one, for though she was now over thirty, and the book had been begun when she was twenty-two, that was as far as it had gone. She was a teacher now, living in a small country town called Landskrona, and had little time to give to writing. But she had at last got into the swing of her story, and she hoped to have it finished in three or four more years.

She won the prize, greatly to her astonishment, for she had long ago lost her childish faith in herself, and had ceased to believe that any stranger would find merit in her work. It was only because of her sister that she sent the manuscript in at all. Not only did she get the prize, but the publishers of the magazine told her they would be glad to publish her book if she would get it written.

Only they did not want to wait for perhaps four years.

And then things began to happen. A friend, the Baroness Adlersparre, who herself wrote under the name of "Esselde," took a deep interest in "Gösta Berling." She told Selma that she must resign from her school work and write the book. How long would it take? It would take a year. Very well, the baroness would see that there was money for that time. And after much persuasion, Selma Lagerlöf went to a pretty villa in Sörmland, where lived other friends, who offered to give her peace and freedom and a room to write in. And she wrote.

So "Gösta Berling" came into the world. And in less time than it takes to get around it, the world hailed the writer as a genius. Fame and fortune had really come to the frail quiet little school-teacher in her far-away country home.

One of the first things she did was to buy back her beloved Mårbacka, which had been sold as the family fortunes sank. And then she went on writing. And two friends of hers, King Oscar and Prince Eugene of Sweden, also called the painter-prince because he was an artist of no mean talent, arranged matters so that she could fulfil her great wish and go abroad. That turned her to writing more stories, set in Italy and other places, and especially to her second masterpiece, "Jerusalem," which begins in Dalecarlia, Sweden, her winter home for a number of years. And then she came home again and settled down in Mårbacka.

In 1909 the great honor of the Nobel prize, $40,000, was given her, as author of the greatest piece of imaginative writing produced within the required period. Was this not very wonderful, happening to the quiet, modest little woman who had been the dreaming, story-loving child in an unknown rectory of that distant northland? Now

the whole world knew of her, and was reading her book, which had been translated into many languages, and was asking for more from her.

She did not write anything especially for children till her "Wonderful Adventures of Nils." In this book all her knowledge of, and sympathy for, her country, its history and legends, its mountains and forests and fields, its picturesque villages and high-pointed churches and snug farmhouses, found a charming expression. On the back of the Wild Goose little Nils sees and hears all that goes to make Sweden. And so, too, have countless children the world around.

With all her fame and fortune, Selma Lagerlöf remains the pleasant, unpretentious, fun-loving, kind-hearted woman of her school-teacher days. She has never married, and, since she is now about fifty-six years old, she will probably remain a spinster. But her friends are thick as the leaves in her beloved forests in full summer. From all the ranks of Sweden's population she can number them, not to mention lands beyond. And doubtless she still has a head full of stories to tell us, delightful as those already written.

It is hard to believe, when you read her books, that a life so quiet and uneventful as hers could have produced so deep an understanding of her fellow human beings, so wide and sweet a sympathy. There is a fine nobility about this woman's books; but even when she is telling about some man or woman who worked evil, she never

DEAR dainty damsel Dorothy,

She does n't know a letter;

seems to be blaming, to be setting herself up as a judge, to be preaching a sermon. She simply tells the story, more as though it were something that really existed, like an oak-tree or a mountain, than as if it were the child of her brain. The bad and the good, the happiness and the sorrow, they are all part of the story, all true, and we ourselves can do the judging.

She is always accurate, too, when she tells us some natural fact, describing a flower or the action of winds, or the look of mist in a summer dawn, or the ways of a bird. Whatever she sees, she sees correctly, and she tells it without trying to alter it. This is rarer than it ought to be.

She has a particular comprehension of children, and, whenever a child comes into her work, it is a joy to find it. Lots of people get sentimental over children in their stories, and make you very uncomfortable, but Miss Lagerlöf is just as honest and just as much at home with a child as with a grown woman like herself.

Most of her stories are still too old for you to read, but, if any of you have not read the two volumes of "Nils," certainly you have a great good time before you. And perhaps you will be all the more interested in the stories from knowing how wonderful was this school-teacher's own adventure of life, and how natural and attractive the simple home life in the story-haunted old rectory where she was born and to which she has happily returned.

I thought that I loved books, but she
Is sure she loves them better.

"For when they stand like this," she says,
"They make a lovely chair
For Rose, and darling Mary Ann,
With room for Baby Clare.

"This big book is too large for them, But just the size for me,

And when I'm tired with fam'ly cares, I sit and rest, you see.

"You only read the books, you know," The merry darling chatters; "But I have fun with them,-and fun 's The only thing that matters."

Anna Yarnell.

A FEATHERED ST. PATRICK

BY LEE S. CRANDALL

Assistant Curator of Ornithology, New York Zoological Park

JOEY was lonesome. Born on his father's isolated farm, he had never known the companionship of children of his own age. Still, there had been no scarcity of animal friends, for South Africa is a land of many pets, and until now he had never felt that anything was missing from his life. But many as were the pets he acquired, accidents had always increased in direct proportion, so uncertain are the lives of wild things in sympathetic but inexperienced hands. A recent series of mishaps had left to the boy only Busy, the fox-terrier, who had outlived a host of less civilized rivals. And only yesterday, during a mad frolic on the neighboring veldt, Busy had carelessly trod on a coiled form, hidden beneath the foliage. There had been a lightning flash of brown, a yelp of surprise from Busy, and, a few short hours later, Joey was companionless. Somehow, the dog had been more lovable, more understanding, than the others. He was ever cheerful, and did not have the curious reversions to wild

instincts so frequently shown by native pets. Moreover, he had come from home, a home which was very real to Joey, although he had never actually seen it.

After the first pangs of grief had passed, Joey's father sought to win him back to cheerfulness by promising a new pet, more interesting than any of its predecessors. He would not tell him what it was to be, but Joey felt that it must be strange indeed to warrant such a description.

This evening, as he sat on the top rail of the long wooden plucking chute-Joey's father was an ostrich farmer-curiosity had almost overcome regret. Not entirely, of course, for Busy had been much loved; but sorrows are never reluctant to give way to joys when one is but eight. Father had promised to bring the vaunted creature that very day, had even agreed to ride considerably out of his way to visit the group of dirty, hivelike huts which formed a Hottentot village a few miles to the north.

As Joey looked across the undulating, flowercovered veldt, he wondered what the new-comer might prove to be. A meerkat, perhaps, or even a ground-hornbill. And once, when passing the