ng wrong, but I
don't want to know what it is. His hands have something
to do with his fear of me and of everyone."

And George Willard was right. Let us look briefly into
the story of the hands. Perhaps our talking of them
will arouse the poet who will tell the hidden wonder
story of the influence for which the hands were but
fluttering pennants of promise.

In his youth Wing Biddlebaum had been a school teacher
in a town in Pennsylvania. He was not then known as
Wing Biddlebaum, but went by the less euphonic name of
Adolph Myers. As Adolph Myers he was much loved by the
boys of his school.

Adolph Myers was meant by nature to be a teacher of
youth. He was one of those rare, little-understood men
who rule by a power so gentle that it passes as a
lovable weakness. In their feeling for the boys under
their charge such men are not unlike the finer sort of
women in their love of men.

And yet that is but crudely stated. It needs the poet
there. With the boys of his school, Adolph Myers had
walked in the evening or had sat talking until dusk
upon the schoolhouse steps lost in a kind of dream.
Here and there went his hands, caressing the shoulders
of the boys, playing about the tousled heads. As he
talked his voice became soft and musical. There was a
caress in that also. In a way the voice and the hands,
the stroking of the shoulders and the touching of the
hair were a part of the schoolmaster's effort to carry
a dream into the young minds. By the caress that was in
his fingers he expressed himself. He was one of those
men in whom the force that creates life is diffused,
not centralized. Under the caress of his hands doubt
and disbelief went out of the minds of the boys and
they began also to dream.

And then the tragedy. A half-witted boy of the school
became enamored of the young master. In his bed at
night he imagined unspeakable things and in the morning
went forth to tell his dreams as facts. Strange,
hideous accusations fell from his loosehung lips.
Through the Pennsylvania town went a shiver. Hidden,
shadowy doubts that had been in men's minds concerning
Adolph Myers were galvanized into beliefs.

The tragedy did not linger. Trembling lads were jerked
out of bed and questioned. "He put his arms about me,"
said one. "His fingers were always playing in my hair,"
said another.

One afternoon a man of the town, Henry Bradford, who
kept a saloon, came to the schoolhouse door. Calling
Adolph Myers into t