the petty officers hear of the prisoner's marvellous
gifts and report them everywhere with such effect that the higher
authorities at last become interested and grant him a pardon.

Tales like these, that draw children from play and old men from the
chimney-corner; that gain the freedom of a Singing Prisoner, and
enable a Scheherazade to postpone from night to night her hour of
death, are one and all pervaded by the same eternal magic. Pain,
grief, terror, care, and bondage are all forgotten for a time when
lakes of gems and enchanted waterfalls shimmer in the sunlight, when
Rakshas's palaces rise, full-built, before our very eyes, or when
Caballero's Knights of the Fish prance away on their magic chargers.
"I wonder when!" "I wonder how!" "I wonder where!" we say as we follow
them into the land of mystery. So Youngling said when he heard the
sound of the mysterious axe in the forest and asked himself who could
be chopping there.

"I wonder!" he cried again when he listened to the faerie spade
digging and delving at the top of the rocks.

"I wonder!" he questioned a third time when he drank from the
streamlet and sought its source, finding it at last in the enchanted
walnut. Axe and spade and walnut each gladly welcomed him, you
remember, saying, "It's long I've been looking for you, my lad!" for
the new world is always awaiting its Columbus.

No such divine curiosity as that of Youngling's stirred the dull minds
of his elder brothers and to them came no such reward. They jeered at
the wanderer, reproaching him that he forever strayed from the beaten
path, but when Youngling issues from the forest with the magic axe,
the marvellous spade, and the miraculous nut to conquer his little
world, we begin to ask ourselves which of the roads in the wood are
indeed best worth following.

"Childish wonder is the first step in human wisdom," said the greatest
of the world's showmen, but there are no wonders to the eyes that lack
real vision. In the story of "What the Birds Said," for instance, the
stolid jailer flatly denies that the feathered creatures have any
message of import to convey; it is the poor captive who by sympathy
and insight divines the meaning of their chatter and thus saves the
city and his own life.

The tales in this book are of many kinds of wonder; of black magic,
white magic and gray; ranging from the recital of strange and
supernatural deeds and experiences to those that fore-shadow modern
conquest