dragged our hero to an opening in the woods where a huge fire was burning, over which was suspended an enormous caldron of bubbling oil. 'Boil him, boil him,' yelled the savages, now wrought to the point of frenzy." "That seems fairly exciting, isn't it?" I said. "Oh, he won't get boiled," said the little boy. "He's the hero." So I knew that the child has already taken his first steps in the disillusionment of fiction. Of course he was quite right as to Ned. This wonderful youth, the hero with whom we all begin an acquaintance with books, passes unhurt through a thousand perils. Cannibals, Apache Indians, war, battles, shipwrecks, leave him quite unscathed. At the most Ned gets a flesh wound which is healed, in exactly one paragraph, by that wonderful drug called a "simple." But the most amazing thing about this particular hero, the boy Ned, is the way in which he turns up in all the great battles and leading events of the world. It was Ned, for example, who at the critical moment at Gettysburg turned in his saddle to General Meade and said quietly, "General, the day is ours." "If it is," answered Meade, as he folded his field glass, "you alone, Ned, have saved it." In the same way Ned was present at the crossing of the Delaware with Washington. Thus:— "'What do you see, Ned?' said Washington, as they peered from the leading boat into the driving snow. "'Ice,' said Ned. 'My boy,' said the Great American General, and a tear froze upon his face as he spoke, 'you