It is many and many a long year now since Gerald and Clotilde walked together down the high-hedged paths, but Master Simon’s garden still blooms green and fair upon the hillside. Ships coming past the rocky headlands of the harbour steer, by night, for the light streaming from that little round window of the great brick mansion, for that is an older landmark than the tall white lighthouse near the entrance of the bay. They are not now the mighty East India merchantmen that luff and tack in the narrow channel, for they, with their tall masts and towering white sails have vanished from the seas forever. Along the shore, nevertheless, you can still see the endless wharves and great, empty warehouses clinging to their rotting piles and almost slipping into the lazy, lapping tide. They manage, somehow, still to stand and tell all people who go by how great was once the trade that brought prosperity back to Hopewell. If you peep within you will see only bare, vacant floors and a long dusty sunbeam or two, dropping from rifts in the sagging roof, but you will sniff a vague scent of fruit and spices as a reminder of the days of the clipper ships of Hopewell, laden with the world’s goods and following Gerald Radpath’s long sea-road to China.

Although those wharves are idle and the warehouses empty, you need not think, however, that the products of America stop at home. No, they are carried by different ships, swift steel vessels that drop long trails of smoke behind them as they speed upon their way, they go out through different harbours, but, just the same, New England goods and New England men find their way to the very ends of the world.

The hum of the spinning-wheel and the creak of the loom that once you could hear in the warm noontide, through the open cottage doors, has increased now a thousand-fold, for rows of great brick factories crown the hill and, far out to sea, the fishermen can see, hanging over Hopewell, the cloud of smoke from hundreds of spouting chimneys. The tiny log but where Goody Parsons planted her rose, the cottage where Samuel Skerry plied his trade, even the house with its white-painted doorway where Miles Atherton used to live, have all vanished to make room for newer, greater buildings. The little meeting house still stands, but is overshadowed by a great stone church, where a huge organ has taken the place of the droning psalm-singing, and where the pastor has now neither time nor need for planting potato fields to eke out his living. Yet amid all the stately buildings about it, schools, library, church and Court House, the old grey log house is the most precious of all, for it stands as a monument to the brave men who reared it and who carried their love of freedom into a new world.

At the bend in the stream where the little Jesuit priest had built his woodland chapel and decked his altar, there is now a busy humming factory town, called by his name and driving its noisy spinning-wheels by means of the river that once babbled past his door. Rows of toiling men and women can look out through their tall windows down upon the grave of Jeremiah Macrae where the Indians set up a rough white stone at the bidding of their dearly loved French father.

In the midst of all this change and growth and bustle of new business, Master Simon’s garden is still untouched. The roses and lilies, the pink peonies and white hollyhocks, bloom on, undisturbed, year after year. The great house of mellow brick, covered now with vines to the very roof, looks out over the sea, unchanged. In the garden, romping down the paths and tumbling on the grass, play Master Simon’s children to a far generation. For but a few years, it seems, they frolic there among the flowers and then, grown to men and women, they set off to do their share of the world’s labour. And there, in June, when the linden tree blooms and the bees hum loud in the branches, they sit upon the bench in the Queen’s Garden and hear the story of Master Simon. Over and over, the tale is told, by mother to daughter, by father to son, a long, long story now, for it reaches back to the times of great Queen Elizabeth, and it will go forward, who can tell how far. Each generation has something new to add, some record of danger faced, of hardship endured, of work well done for the good of all. And they who hear it, those growing boys and girls, store it away as a memory to serve in time of need, so that, when the time comes, they may do their part in the labour of the world, that they may take up Master Simon’s work and bear it a little further, that they may build higher and yet higher the roofs of gold.

The following pages contain advertisements of books by the same author or on kindred subjects.

THE KINGDOM OF THE WINDING ROAD

By CORNELIA MEIGS

With illustrations in color and in black and white by Frances White. Cloth, 12mo, $1.25.

A romantic and fanciful story of a beggar who travels the country over in his tattered red cloak, playing his penny flute—which is in reality a magic pipe to help those in distress and to combat the bitterness of life.

“There is a charm about the telling of the tales which will place them in the front rank of works of the kind.”—Congregationalist and Christian World.

THE STEADFAST PRINCESS

By CORNELIA MEIGS

Cloth, 12mo, Fifty cents

Fairy stories in the form of plays or tableaux for children are not uncommon but few of them can be recommended as highly as “The Steadfast Princess.”—Springfield Republican.

“A play of exceptional literary quality.”—Review of Reviews.

ISABEL CARLETON’S YEAR

By MARGARET ASHMUN

The senior year in high school of a charming, bright and very human girl is the theme of this story—her girlish ambitions, her occupations, her amusements, her sacrifices and her triumphs. The scene is laid in Jefferson, a college town of the Middle West, and in addition to the Carleton family—Professor Carleton absorbed in his work but fond of his children; his wife, who is Isabel’s close friend and a wise one, and Isabel’s sister—there are introduced a number of happy young people whom Miss Ashmun characterizes with real insight into boy and girl nature. Among these friends of Isabel is Rodney Fox, and while the story closes with Isabel’s graduation from high school and her preparation for a trip abroad, there is the suggestion that in time this friendship, which has gone through the years, will ripen into something deeper. Miss Ashmun has well succeeded in her purpose, which was to write a story that would appeal to the girl in her teens.

THE THREE PEARLS

By J. W. FORTESQUE

A fairy story of unusual charm is this, having to do with three pearls worn in a royal crown. Good luck goes with them so long as they are honored; ill fortune comes when they are dishonored. The possibilities of this theme are many and the author has made much of them. The tale is rich in imagination, in color and in that kind of fairy adventure which has delighted children and grown-ups for aeons past. The illustrations are by Alice B. Woodward.

THE KEY TO BETSY’S HEART

By SARAH NOBLE IVES

This is the story of Betsy and her dog. Betsy is a little country girl who, after her mother’s death is taken into the family of her Aunt Kate, a wise and charming person whose duty it is to bring Betsy up properly, while Betsy in turn has to bring up Van, a fox terrier. It is the dog, of course, that proves to be the key to the shy girl’s heart—an extraordinarily nice “pup” whose education is carried on simultaneously with Betsy’s, only along different lines. Both as a dog story and as a girl story The Key to Betsy’s Heart is eminently satisfying, and it is safe to conjecture that there will be many little girls in real life and a few elders, too, who will be delighted with it.

KING ARTHUR AND THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE

By SIR THOMAS MALORY

Edited by Clifton Johnson. With illustrations in color and in black and white by Rodney Thomson.

This is a very attractive edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s famous book. It has been edited by Clifton Johnson, who has prepared it particularly for children from ten to fifteen years of age. Not only is this one of the golden stories that all boys and girls ought to read—it is one which they will enjoy reading. Mr. Thomson’s illustrations in black and white and in color are spirited and add both to the appearance of the volume, and to the reader’s enjoyment of the text.

“Most admirable in their construction and purpose. The volumes are interesting and attractive in appearance, graphic in style and wonderfully inspiring in subject matter, reaching an enviable mark in juvenile literature.”—Philadelphia Public Ledger.

Each volume is attractively bound in decorated cloth covers. Printed on good paper and contains six page illustrations in half-tone. Cloth, $.50

ROBERT FULTON By ALICE C. SUTCLIFFE

“The volume is a thoroughly good piece of work and heartily to be recommended.”—San Francisco Argonaut.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH By ROSSITER JOHNSON

“The picturesque story is one of the bright spots in the somewhat dreary early American history, and all children should know it.”—New York Sun.

ROBERT E. LEE By BRADLEY GILMAN

“The story of Lee’s life is sympathetically told and with a fine appreciation of those traits in his character that have commanded universal respect.”—Review of Reviews.

NATHAN HALE By JEAN CHRISTIE ROOT

“There in more than the work of a gifted biographer here. There is a message.”—New York World.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN By DANIEL E. WHEELER

“It is an excellent book, the author having used good judgment in deciding what to leave out in a life about which there was so much to say.”—Brooklyn Eagle.

THOMAS A. EDISON By FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER

“Cannot fail to appeal to every boy.”—The Nation.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN By E. LAWRENCE DUDLEY

“Filled with the adventure that fascinates the boy, the story is still thoroughly authentic and reliable.”—Congregationalist and Christian World.