drop mathematics from the curriculum in the public schools
and to substitute therefor a four years' course in fairy literature, to
be followed, if the pupil desired, by a post-graduate course in
demonology and folk-lore. We hired and fitted up large rooms, and the
cause seemed to be flourishing until the second month's rent fell due.
It was then discovered that the treasury was empty; and with this
discovery the society ended its existence, without having accomplished
any tangible result other than the purchase of a number of sofas and
chairs, for which Judge Methuen and I had to pay.

Still, I am of the opinion (and Judge Methuen indorses it) that we need
in this country of ours just that influence which the fairy tale
exerts. We are becoming too practical; the lust for material gain is
throttling every other consideration. Our babes and sucklings are no
longer regaled with the soothing tales of giants, ogres, witches, and
fairies; their hungry, receptive minds are filled with stories about
the pursuit and slaughter of unoffending animals, of war and of murder,
and of those questionable practices whereby a hero is enriched and
others are impoverished. Before he is out of his swaddling-cloth the
modern youngster is convinced that the one noble purpose in life is to
get, get, get, and keep on getting of worldly material. The fairy tale
is tabooed because, as the sordid parent alleges, it makes youth
unpractical.

One consequence of this deplorable condition is, as I have noticed (and
as Judge Methuen has, too), that the human eye is diminishing in size
and fulness, and is losing its lustre. By as much as you take the
God-given grace of fancy from man, by so much do you impoverish his
eyes. The eye is so beautiful and serves so very many noble purposes,
and is, too, so ready in the expression of tenderness, of pity, of
love, of solicitude, of compassion, of dignity, of every gentle mood
and noble inspiration, that in that metaphor which contemplates the
eternal vigilance of the Almighty we recognize the best poetic
expression of the highest human wisdom.

My nephew Timothy has three children, two boys and a girl. The elder
boy and the girl have small black eyes; they are as devoid of fancy as
a napkin is of red corpuscles; they put their pennies into a tin bank,
and they have won all the marbles and jack-stones in the neighborhood.
They do not believe in Santa Claus or in fairies or in witches; they
know that t