nd her elves in convention behind the rose
bush, or the whispers of gnomes hiding among the cornrows.

Good republican that I was, I listened without reproof to her adoring
fealty to Kings and Queens. Her love of Knights and tournaments was
openly fostered at my hand. "If she should die out of this, her glorious
imaginary world, she shall die happy," was my thought, "and if she lives
to look back upon it with a woman's eyes, she shall remember it as a
shining world in which her Daddy was a rough but kindly councillor, a
mortal of whom no fairy need have fear."

The circus was my daughter's royal tournament, an assemblage of all the
kings and queens, knights and fairies of her story books. She hated the
clowns but the parade of the warriors and their sovereign exalted her.
The helmeted spearmen, the lithe charioteers, the hooded drivers sitting
astride the heads of vast elephants were characters of the Arabian
Nights, passing veritably before her eyes. The winged dancers of the
spectacle came straight from the castle of Queen Mab, the pale acrobats
were brothers to Hector and Achilles.

As she watched them pass she gripped my hand as if to keep touch with
reality, her little heart swollen with almost intolerable delight. "It
makes me shiver," she whispered, and I understood.

As the last horseman of the procession was passing, she asked
faintly--"Will it come again, Poppie?"

"Yes, it will come once more," I replied, recalling my own sense of loss
when the Grand Entry was over.

As the queen, haughty of glance, superb in her robe of silver once more
neared us, indolently swaying to the movement of the elephant, who bore
his housings of purple and gold with stately solemnity, my daughter's
tiny body quivered with ecstasy and her beautiful eyes dilated with an
intensity of admiration, of worship which made me sad as well as happy,
and then just as the resplendent princess was passing for the last time,
Mary Isabel rose in her place and waving a kiss to her liege lady cried
out in tones of poignant love and despair, "Good-by, dear Queen!" and I,
holding her tender palpitant figure in my arms, heard in that slender
silver-sweet cry the lament of childhood, childhood whose dreams were
passing never to return.

* * * * *

Chicago did not offer much by way of magnificence but Mary Isabel made
the most of what we took her to see. The gold room of the hotel was a
part of her imaginary kingd