and he began to stand up quite straight.

"When Mary found this garden it looked quite dead," the orator
proceeded. "Then something began pushing things up out of the soil and
making things out of nothing. One day things weren't there and another
they were. I had never watched things before and it made me feel very
curious. Scientific people are always curious and I am going to be
scientific. I keep saying to myself, 'What is it? What is it?' It's
something. It can't be nothing! I don't know its name so I call it
Magic. I have never seen the sun rise but Mary and Dickon have and from
what they tell me I am sure that is Magic too. Something pushes it up
and draws it. Sometimes since I've been in the garden I've looked up
through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being
happy as if something were pushing and drawing in my chest and making me
breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out
of nothing. Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees, flowers
and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all
around us. In this garden--in all the places. The Magic in this garden
has made me stand up and know I am going to live to be a man. I am going
to make the scientific experiment of trying to get some and put it in
myself and make it push and draw me and make me strong. I don't know how
to do it but I think that if you keep thinking about it and calling it
perhaps it will come. Perhaps that is the first baby way to get it. When
I was going to try to stand that first time Mary kept saying to herself
as fast as she could, 'You can do it! You can do it!' and I did. I had
to try myself at the same time, of course, but her Magic helped me--and
so did Dickon's. Every morning and evening and as often in the daytime
as I can remember I am going to say, 'Magic is in me! Magic is making me
well! I am going to be as strong as Dickon, as strong as Dickon!' And
you must all do it, too. That is my experiment. Will you help, Ben
Weatherstaff?"

"Aye, aye, sir!" said Ben Weatherstaff. "Aye, aye!"

"If you keep doing it every day as regularly as soldiers go through
drill we shall see what will happen and find out if the experiment
succeeds. You learn things by saying them over and over and thinking
about them until they stay in your mind forever and I think it will be
the same with Magic. If you keep calling it to come to you and help you
it will get to be part of yo