AFTER all, it is no fun posing at being a man. It is not, as you would inform the other boys, the pleasant sinecure that it is currently presumed to be, amongst your kind. The picture has more depth than appears at the distance. As you approach, you note only the surface tints; but when you have arrived, then begin to unfold aspects previously quite unsuspected.

So now, having had experience, you fain would turn back, and doffing for all time those starchy, heavy, strait-jacket garments which you have mistakenly donned, you would resume the free-and-easy blouse and knickerbockers and tattered brim, and would rejoin your gay brethren of school and vacation. You have learned your lesson, and you will leave them no more.

So be it. But alas, unavailingly you stop on your way down-town, beside the vacant lot where the other boys are playing ball, and look wistfully in upon them. None yells:

“Come on, Jocko. You’re tenth fielder.”

Once the ball rolls your way. You toss it back—toss it awkwardly, somehow, proving that you are out of practice. However, you can limber up right speedily. You have been away, they should know.

“Aw, you’re out! You’re out! You are too! Ask that man. He’s out, ain’t he, Mister?”

You wait for “that man,” wherever he may be, to reply. But you yourself are the sole spectator, and you gaze right and left, puzzled.

“He’s out—ain’t he!”

You! It is you to whom they are appealing! You nod, confusedly.

“Ya-a-a! The man says you’re out!”

The man! The word gives you a little shock. They are styling you “man”! A sensation of disappointment and surprise sweeps through you; here you are, Rip Van Winkle, whom nobody knows. If only these your former cronies might see through and recognize what lies behind this thin disguise, they would realize that you really are but ten, and one of them.

All in the broad sun the other boys are “goin’ fishin’.” It is a prime day. Your being tingles for the poise of the trusty old pole upon your shoulder, and the feel of the fat bait-can in your jacket pocket. Hang business! You repudiate its tyranny. That “engagement” may importune, in vain. The perch are running, the kids are “all catchin’ ’em,” “fishin’” is “dandy.” Hurrah! The old-time wanderlust is stirring in your veins. You will go. But—something holds you back. It will not be much fun to fish alone. Something tells you that even though you “fire” your shoes and stockings and strip to shirt and trousers, and boldly enter the fray, still will you be an alien, and looked upon askance. You are a “man,” and perch and bullheads are not for the likes of you.

Nevertheless, you can try. There hastens Hen—or, at least, one who might be Hen—pattering down the street, all accoutered for the ranks of joy and rivalry.

“Goin’ fishin’?” you demand bluffly.

“Yes, sir.”

“Sir!” In a word has he relegated you to your place. He knows you—knows that you have no fish-worms in your pocket, and that to match his mighty pole you have only a paltry jointed “rod.”

He pauses impatiently. He has little time to waste with you.

“Any good?”

“Yes, sir.”

Irksomely respectful, now with a wriggle he is off, onward into his magic realms, leaving you to gaze after, chastened, chagrined.

Oh, this hideous disguise—this iron metamorphosis which wizard Time, the inexorable, has laid upon you! There is no dropping it.

You turn to Nature; surely Nature has the acumen to recognize that you have grown not at all, save, perhaps, in stature. But the sun burns, the rain wets, the snow chills—each uncompromising and austere. The pond that once stretched away like an ocean shrinks and shallows at your coming, till you can almost step from bank to bank; the once limitless wood, as wild and as romantic as the Carpathians, mischievously contracts so that you can see through from side to side; the highroad is dusty, and the paths refuse to lead, but are finished in a stride. Everything conspires to remind you that you are foreign, Brobdingnagian, a personage apart, and that too late have you faced about.

To the pleasures and to the favors that were you have forfeited the “Open, sesame!”

You may not reinstate yourself by the company that you keep, for the company of old—where is it? Vanished; changed, like yourself; resistlessly urged on and ever on by the current which there is no stemming. Hen is a “man”—he runs a grocery store. Billy Lunt is a “man”—and an M.D., to boot. “Fat” Day is a “man”—even an alderman. “Snoopie” Mitchell, aye, the independent, envied Snoopie, whom naught, you believed, could coerce, is a “man”—for sometimes you are whirled along behind his engine. They all seem to glory in their estate and its attributes. And to them, you are a “man.”

Exists only one authority to support your quest of boyhood; only one heart, besides your own, which apparently would be glad to have you again in blouse and knickerbockers; and to her you are still a boy, with the freckles concealed, merely, by that pointed beard at which she gently rails even in her pride. Mother! You can depend upon mother, as of yore. She is no older, herself; she is the same. Mother never changes. You are no older, yourself; you are the same. Let the other boys call you “man” and say “sir”; let sun and rain and snow, and pond and wood and path, deny you their one-time hospitality. To all the world without you may be a “man,” but to mother you are her “boy.”

Yet Time, forsooth, wrests even this anchorage from you. Comes an hour when, confronted by the inevitable, helpless in its grip, unreconciled even in your resignation, you dully stand by a bedside and wait—wait—wait.

Suddenly the eyes open and look up into yours with understanding. The graying, wrinkled face faintly smiles.

“What a great big boy you are getting to be, Johnny,” she murmurs, in vague surprise.

That is all. She is gone, and with her departs your last hold upon the things that were. Your morning is passed forever. It is noon. You must turn away, irrevocably the man.

It is impossible to convey the charm of this mountain tale with its flashes of humor, its intimate touches of nature, and its delicate love story. It is an idyl. Not only is the story an exceptionally charming one in itself, but the book is one of the most attractive of the season in point of manufacture. The binding and frontispiece in rich color, the page decorations in green, and the numerous illustrations, fit the book admirably.

With Introduction and Illustrations in Color and Line, by George Alfred Williams. 4to, $2.00

Mr. Williams is best known to the public as the artist of “Ten Boys from Dickens” and “Ten Girls from Dickens.” His interpretation of the men and women, and the abandonment of grotesque caricatures for the portrayal of the more human side of the characters, marks a new era in Dickens illustrations.

The book is printed in two colors, handsomely bound, and is the most attractive edition of the popular Dickens Christmas Books which has yet appeared.