IT’S YOUR FAIRY TALE,
YOU KNOW
CHAPTER I
THE WISHING STONE
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 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.