, James?"
my mother said.

James was climbing into the saddle. Being a deliberate man in all his
actions, he made no sign that he had heard until he had both feet
securely in the stirrups, until he had struck a match on his boot-leg
and had lighted his pipe, until he had unhooked the single rein by
which he guided the leaders and was ready to give his horses the word
to move. Then he spoke in a voice of gentle protest:

"You hadn't otter worry about Davy, ma'am, not when he's with me." His
long whip was swinging in the air, but he checked it, that he might
turn to me and ask: "Now, Davy, you're sure you have your hook and
line?"

I nodded.

"And your can o' worms for bait?"

Again I nodded. The whip cracked. And I was off on the greatest
adventure of my life! My charger was a shaggy farm-horse, hitched
ignominiously to the pole of a noisy wood-wagon; my squire, the lanky,
loose-limbed James; my goal, the mountains to which were set my young
eyes, impatiently measuring the miles of rolling valley which I must
cross before I reached the land that until now I had seen only in the
wizard lights of distance.

Every one lives a story--every man and every woman. A million miles of
book-shelves could not hold the romances which are being lived around
you and will be unwritten. I am sure that when your own story has been
lived, when it is stored in your heart and memory, you will follow the
binding thread of it, and find it leading you back, as mine leads me to
one day like that day in May when I went fishing. There will be your
Chapter I. Before that, you will see, you were but a slip of humanity
taking root on earth. My own life began ten years before that May
morning, but on that May morning began my story. Then I rode all
unconscious of it. I was simply going fishing for trout. Yet, as I
clung to my heavy-footed horse and kept my eyes fixed on the distant
mountains, my heart beat quick with the spirit of adventure, for to
fish for trout in mysterious forests meant a great deal to one who had
known only the sluggish waters in the meadow and the martyrlike
resignation of the chub and sunny. I might begin my story on that
winter morning when I came into the world and bleated my protest
against living at all, but I pass by those years when I was only a slip
of humanity taking root on earth and come to that May day which is the
first to rise distinctly on my inward vision when I turn to retrospect.
Even no