s steam engine, certainly
he suspects that I am a novice. He shows a disregard of my castles,
and although I build them on the windy vantage of a chair, with dizzy
battlements topping all the country, he brushes them into ruin.

Sometimes I fancy that his glance is mixed with scorn, and that he
considers my attempts to amuse him as rather a silly business. I
wonder what he thinks about when he looks at me seriously. I cannot
doubt his wisdom. He seems to resemble a philosopher who has traveled
to us from a distant world. If he cast me a sentence from Plato, I
would say, "Master, I listen." Is it Greek he speaks, or a dark
language from a corner of the sky? He has a far-off look as though he
saw quite through these superficial affairs of earth. His eyes have
borrowed the color of his wanderings and they are as blue as the
depths beyond the moon. And I think of another child, somewhat older
than himself, whose tin soldiers these many years are rusted, a
thoughtful silent child who was asked, once upon a time, what he did
when he got to bed. "Gampaw," he replied, "I lies and lies, Gampaw,
and links and links, 'til I know mos' everysin'." The snow of a few
winters, the sun of summer, the revolving stars and seasons--until
this lad now serves in France.

My nephew, although he too roams these distant spaces of philosophic
thought and brings back strange unexpected treasure, has not arrived
at the age of mere terrestrial exploration. He is quite ignorant of
his own house and has no curiosity about the back stairs--the back
stairs that go winding darkly from the safety of the kitchen. Scarcely
is the fizzing of dinner lost than a new strange world engulfs one.
He is too young to know that a doorway in the dark is the portal of
adventure. He does not know the mystery and the twistings of the
cellar, or the shadows of the upper hallway and the dim hollows that
grow and spread across the twilight.

Dear lad, there is a sunny world beyond the garden gate, cities and
rolling hills and far-off rivers with white sails going up and down.
There are wide oceans, and ships with tossing lights, and islands set
with palm trees. And there are stars above your roof for you to wonder
at. But also, nearer home, there are gentle shadows on the stairs, a
dim cellar for the friendly creatures of your fancy, and for your
exalted mood there is a garret with dark corners. Here, on a braver
morning, you may push behind the trunks and boxes and com