ators may agree with it,
for if they do our educators here at home will follow so distinguished
a lead.

Of Edmund Leamy, in his personal aspect, I have already said something
in my preface to the Dublin edition. I need only add here that this
true-hearted Irishman had many friends on the American continent, and
that to them this little flower of his genius will be a vivid and
abiding souvenir of one of the most lovable of men.

If this book have the success in America which it deserves--and I hope
that success may be extended to Canada and the Australias--I believe a
charming and ennobling boon will have been conferred upon the child-life
of these great communities; and it will be a source of gratification to
those who were the author's friends and colleagues to think that that
gift came from one by whose side we had the honor to serve in Ireland's
struggles.

J. E. REDMOND.

Aughavannagh, _June, 1911_.

THE GOLDEN SPEARS

Once upon a time there lived in a little house under a hill a little old
woman and her two children, whose names were Connla and Nora. Right in
front of the door of the little house lay a pleasant meadow, and beyond
the meadow rose up to the skies a mountain whose top was sharp-pointed
like a spear. For more than halfway up it was clad with heather, and
when the heather was in bloom it looked like a purple robe falling from
the shoulders of the mountain down to its feet. Above the heather it was
bare and gray, but when the sun was sinking in the sea, its last rays
rested on the bare mountain top and made it gleam like a spear of gold,
and so the children always called it the "Golden Spear."

In summer days they gamboled in the meadow, plucking the sweet wild
grasses--and often and often they clambered up the mountain side, knee
deep in the heather, searching for frechans and wild honey, and sometimes
they found a bird's nest--but they only peeped into it, they never
touched the eggs or allowed their breath to fall upon them, for next to
their little mother they loved the mountain, and next to the mountain
they loved the wild birds who made the spring and summer weather musical
with their songs.

Sometimes the soft white mist would steal through the glen, and creeping
up the mountain would cover it with a veil so dense that the children
could not see it, and then they would say to each other: "Our mountain
is gone away from us." But when the mist would lift and float off into
the sk