Copyright, 1913, by Charles Scribner’s Sons
Published October, 1913

In most men worth considering there appears to be, from three to ninety, an ineradicable boyhood. Give the lad, of six or sixty, a horse or a boat or a holiday, and he forgets the world and begins playing.

A list of such men whom one knows would be, happily, an encyclopædia. This book is dedicated to all such, between the lines of the names below. You whom I remember in Kentucky, and You in the West, and You across the room, smoking, and You in the crowded city, and You where velvet mountains rim the sky-line—will know that You are in this inscription. So the inscription goes, with many names unnamed, to a splendid phalanx of young Americans, lately boys in years, graduates of Yale, friends of mine:

E. Farrar Bateson, Lucius Horatio Biglow, Paul Howard McGregor Converse, Douglas Fitch Guilford Eliot, William Brown Glover, Allen Trafford Klots, Francis Ely Norris, George Richardson, Harold Phelps Stokes, Horace Winston Stokes, Francis Berger Trudeau, James Thornton, Francis Melzar Watrous, and Paul Shipman Andrews.

CONTENTS

I.The Scarlet Ibis[1]
II.The Campaign Trout[57]
III.The Reward of Virtue[103]
IV.The Sabine Maiden[135]
V.The Whistling of Zoëtique[179]
VI.The Young Man with Wings[233]
VII.Amici[285]
VIII.The Captains[333]
IX.Little Marcus[395]

ILLUSTRATIONS

Jack put the rod into the man’s hand and held the hand carefully for a few trial castsFrontispiece
Facing
page
“State the situation now, Izaak Walton,” he commanded[46]
“Now!” said Walter, and the net swept toward the trout[98]
The alders parted, and out from them stepped the most magnificent brute I ever saw alive[126]
At that moment No. 5 began[218]
The beautiful voice, with its haunting under-quality, floated out over the company of middle-aged men[314]
“Two captains in one canoe are overallowance!”[366]
“I don’t see why fair play isn’t the thing—the only thing—for a white man after he leaves college as much as before”[378]

THE SCARLET IBIS