nd
troublesome thing. So Morpheus found it, and therefore he frequently
stayed in bed, and allowed his fancy to rove at its own sweet will.

They lived in what had been a monastery. There had been houses and farms
on the Lazybones property, but the money not being forthcoming for
repairs, they had been each in turn left for another in better
condition, until the monastery--what was left of it--with its solidly
built walls, offered what seemed to be a permanent home.

Here Morpheus lined a cell with tapestries and books, and wrote his
sonnets. Here Leo slept and ate, and housed his dogs. The servants
grumbled at the damp and mould, but made the chimneys roar with blazing
logs, and held many a merry carousal where the old monks had prayed and
fasted. The more devout ones rebuked these proceedings, and said they
were enough to provoke a visit from the Evil One; but as yet the warning
had no effect, as the revels went on as usual.

Besides being a poet, Morpheus was conducting Leo's education.
Undertaken in the common way, this might have interfered with the
delicate modes of thought required for the production of poems, but the
Lazybones were never without ingenuity. Morpheus so arranged matters
that Leo could study without damage to his father's poems. The books
were marked for a month's study, and Leo's recitations consisted of a
written essay which was to comprise all the knowledge acquired in that
time. Thus writing and spelling were included, and made to do duty for
the higher flights of his mind.

I do not tell how often Leo made his returns, neither do I mention how
many papers Morpheus found no time to examine, but I may urge that Leo's
out-door exercise demanded much attention, and that his father's
excursions in Dream-land were equally exacting. But Leo, though he hated
books, did not hate information. He knew every feathered thing by name
as far as he could see it. He knew every oak and pine and fir and nut
tree as a familiar friend. He knew every rivulet, every ravine, every
rabbit-burrow. The streams seemed to him as melodious as the song-birds,
and the winds had voices. He knew where to find the first blossom of
spring and the latest of autumn, the ripest fruit and most abundant
vines. He could tell just where the nests were and the number of eggs,
whether of the robin or the waterfowl. He knew the sunniest bank and
shadiest dell, the smoothest path, with its carpet of pine-needles and
fringe of fern, or