Clemens could never have looked tall, even at his youngest and thinnest. But eagle-like he did look, and striking he remained to his last day.

It is n't only that Mark Twain lived all over America. He lived through all the different phases of the country's growth. His family was slave-holding. He went through the war of the Union, fighting a little, getting captured twice, breaking parole the second time, and escaping to the west. He had been a printer, a writer, a river pilot, and a prospector. In California, he began to make his mark as a humorist. While on the "Territorial Enterprise," he had begun to sign his articles and stories "Mark Twain," a pseudonym about which there have been several stories. Clemens himself said that he took the name from a Captain Isaiah Sellers, who wrote river news for the New Orleans "Picayune,” signing it Mark Twain, and who died in 1863. The origin of the name is well known, coming from the man at the bow of the river steamer who heaves the lead-"By the mark, three. By the mark, twain," etc.

Next in line for young Sam Clemens was the fame accruing from his story of "The Jumping Frog." He had heard this story, or its suggestion, told by Coon Drayton, an ex-Mississippi pilot, at Angel's Camp. Mark Twain loved this story, and later on he wrote it up. He also told it, and Bret Harte used to say that no one knew how funny the story was who had n't heard it told in that inimitable drawl by Sam himself.

This story brought him world-wide fame. But as for money, Clemens still had precious little of that. He kept at his journalistic work, and in 1866 was sent to the Sandwich Islands, from which place he sent in his great scoop of the Hornet disaster. You can read all about it in Twain's "My Début as a Literary Person," and also how "Harpers" accepted the story for the magazine, and how the delighted author was going to give a banquet to celebrate the event. But he had not written his signature clearly, and when the story appeared it was under the name "Mike Swain."

After this, Twain began to lecture, making a great hit all along the Pacific coast, and in December, 1866, he came to New York on the first leg of his tour around the world, the tour that resulted in "The Innocents Abroad," though it did not go all round the proposed circle. From that time, Clemens' standing was assured. The profits of the book were $70,000.

After this the east was Clemens's home. He married Miss Olivia L. Langdon in 1870, and made his residence in Hartford for many years. In 1875, he wrote the great book about Tom Sawyer, which is largely autobiographical. Sam was

to keep out of sight as his father walked on. This father was a stern, severe man, and poor Sam had many an uncomfortable encounter with him.

Twain was sixty years old when he started to repay the debts of his failure as a publisher. He made a tour round the world, lecturing everywhere, besides writing several books, among them the splendid "Pudd'nhead Wilson." Every cent was paid off, and, before he died, he had made a new fortune.

What a man he was! Beginning as a barefoot boy in a sleepy Mississippi river town, a journeyman printer with little education and no promise of a future, a river pilot, an unlucky prospector, he became a man of world-wide fame and im

mense influence. His books have gone everywhere, have made generations laugh and weep. He was not only a great humorist, he was a man of high courage and fine ideals, a man who hated shams and lies, and struck at them fiercely. He

knew human nature, laughed at its queer contradictions, admired and respected its goodness and kindness. Always he is intensely American, without being provincial. Not only did he have a genius for writing. He had a genius for being a man! If, as a young man, he was inclined to be too extravagant, too irreverent, he conquered that tendency. He grew in wisdom and in perception, and he loved people, loved men and women and children. That is why we all love him. There is a glow to him. You can warm your heart at his books, much as you warm your hands at a fire.

Mr. Gilbert Chesterton, the English author, and a wit himself, says of Mark Twain: "All honest people saw the point of Twain's wit. Not a few dishonest people felt it."

But to the whole world of youth Mark Twain is Tom Sawyer, the Immortal Boy, the greatest boy of fiction, the American boy, and yet the essential boy that links all boys of whatever nationality together. Tom and Huck-what more do you want?

What impressed you perhaps most about Mark Twain was that he seemed to have met everybody. There was n't a type of human nature he had n't personally known. And this was very near the truth, for his years on the Mississippi and in the west, coupled with his long life in the east and his knowledge of Europe and the Orient, had brought him into contact with all sorts and kinds of "humans."

Read, if you have n't read, "Tom Sawyer," "Huck Finn," and "Life on the Mississippi." And then sit down and be thankful that America produced Mark Twain. You can hardly imagine one of them without the other.

BOOKS THAT DON'T GROW OLD

As long as there are children in the world, and probably that will be for quite a while yet, some books will never grow old. Each year sees them fresh and radiant, with new covers and new pictures, ready for the new children whom they are to delight and amuse. Santa Claus knows all about these books, and likes to have them in his pack, for long experience has taught him that there is hardly any gift he brings so sure to please the little people he loves, nor one that lasts better. It would be a big task to tell about all these books, and would take up altogether too much time-so much that there would be hardly enough left to give to even one of the books themselves. But I'm going to describe a few of these new-old books which you may be particularly glad to have among your Christmas presents, or may like to give to some one else.

In the first place, there is "Mother Goose." It would certainly be a bad business to have to grow up without Mother Goose; something no child should be asked to do. She 's such a merry old lady, and both so wise and so foolish, that we simply can't get along without her and her funny sayings and pretty songs. And since we all feel that way about her, many artists have delighted to draw her portrait and make pictures for her stories. One of the latest artists to do her honor is Arthur Rackham, as such of you who take ST. NICHOLAS regularly know very well. But you don't know what a splendid volume has been made of his "Mother Goose" pictures, and penand-ink sketches, and fascinating silhouettes until you see it. He has chosen all the verses he likes best, for there is n't room to put all there are even into so big a book as this one. And he has given them the special form familiar to him when he was a child, as he was told them by his elders, sometimes the same you know, sometimes a bit different, for Mother Goose was spoken and sung long before she was written, and different people remembered her in different ways.

When you hold this fine big book on your knees and turn the pages, you begin to think that no one has ever made quite the right pictures for Mother Goose before. Such faint, lovely colors, almost like the colors in a soap-bubble, such delightfully quaint little maids, queer old women, mischievous boys, spooky old men, amusing animals, and elves, and trees, and houses! If the stories and songs had set to work to make the pictures themselves, they could n't have done better. Hardly a page but has a little figure on it, and, besides the full pages in color, there are others in black and white almost as charming. The cover has a big colored picture of the old Mother on her famous goose flying over the heads of a group of astonished little children; and the pages inside are so big, and the type so large and clear, that you will love to read it aloud to your small sister or brother who does n't yet know how.

Animal stories have always been told, and always will be told, but perhaps none better than Kipling's "Jungle Book," and "Second Jungle Book," stories. Those mix up fairy truth with animal truth, and are breathlessly interesting and full of marvelous adventure, besides being laid in the strange and mysterious land of India. Every year thousands and thousands of boys and girls are made happy with these tales. And this year there will be as many more to become acquainted with Mowgli, the little boy who was brought up by the wolves and learned to hunt with the pack, and to talk the animal language,

who was the friend of the Black Panther and of Baloo, the bear, and knew the bandar-log, or monkey people. These books are young, as neverold books go, but the grandchildren of the boys and girls who read them now will read them in the time to come, and find them just as new and wonderful.

You can get both the Jungle Books in the regular edition, serviceably bound in green cloth, with illustrations in black and white, or you can get the first book in the beautiful illustrated edition, with pictures in full color by Maurice and Edward Detmold, and the margins of the pages prettily decorated with a design in pale green of tropic vegetation. This edition is gilt-topped and comes in a box, and makes a very beautiful gift. But whether you get that or the other, you will find a world of joy in the stories, written by a great master in his happiest vein.

Most of you know the stories of Ernest Thompson Seton, and as many of you as know them like them. They, too, are about animals, generally American animals, and they try to tell just what may likely happen in the life of the wild folk as they go about their daily business. Two books by Mr. Seton, "The Biography of a Grizzly," and "The Biography of a Silver Fox," are such fine stories, and tell so much about their subjects, that they alone are sufficient introduction to the life of the wilderness. Beautifully printed, and delightfully illustrated by the author, these books

Copyright by Perie MacDonald. ERNEST THOMPSON SETON.

are a treat to grown-ups as well as to the youngsters of the family, and while they tell the lives of their animal heroes as though they were a story, all the natural facts can be depended upon, for Mr. Seton knows what he 's writing about.

Another of Mr. Seton's books that will make a mighty nice Christmas gift is "Woodmyth and Fable," with a number of his pictures in it, delicious, dashing sketches in pen and ink, some of them funny, all of them good. The myths and fables are both wise and entertaining, most of them concerned with animals or Indians, some in verse, all with a neat little moral at the end, as is the way of fables everywhere. The book is bound in red cloth and printed in a pretty shade of red ink, and, altogether, you won't go wrong if you put this volume on your list.

And now, just for a good wind-up, we 'll go back to Kipling for the last book there is room to speak of. This is his famous "Captains Courageous," the story of the American millionaire's son who fell overboard from a transatlantic steamer and was picked up by a Gloucester fishing schooner, and had to stay aboard from May to September. He was a spoiled boy of fifteen when he arrived on that boat, and what happened to him there, and what it made of him, as well as the splendid picture of the Gloucester fishing folk and life on the Banks, make a rousing story that every boy, and girl too, ought to know and is sure to love.

CHILDREN OF THE WOOD

MANY a secret of the wood folks' doings is seen only by the full moon as he bathes hill and dale with a flood of silvery light or peeps through the openings of the forest's leafy curtain.

Let us uncover one of these carefully guarded secrets. To do this, we must climb the rocky hillside nearly to the top, where a moss-covered ledge is almost hidden by the overhanging leaves. If we look closely, we shall find an opening that forms a sort of cave between the rocks-and the secret is out-for we have located the abode of Mrs. Red Fox and her family of children.

And what children they are, with their broad faces, big ears, pointed noses, and sparkling eyes! Four of the cutest, brightest, furriest little fellows that can well be imagined, as they play about just outside the den, wrestling with each other or tumbling over one another in a wild goodnatured scramble until they are tired out, or

"NOT UNTIL NIGHT COMES DOES SHE SALLY FORTH

ON HER HUNTING EX-
PEDITIONS.

until a warning signal from the ever watch ful mother sends them scurrying back into the den.

But life is not all a gay frolic with the little fellows, for now they are just at the school-day age. Yes! children of the woods have school-days too, with lessons to learn. Mother Fox is their

teacher, and much of her time, when not hunting, is given to their instruction. She brings them many kinds of game, not only to appease their hunger, but that they may become familiar with some of the objects of the future chase. Small animals and birds are often brought home alive to serve as first lessons in hunting. A little later, on calm days, the whole family will be taken to a near-by field and shown the tricks of catching field-mice.

The little foxes must also be made aware of the many dangers that surround them, and the ways of escape. They will learn to trust their noses more than eyes; to keep to cover whenever possible; never to follow a thing when they cannot smell it; or travel in a straight line if it can be prevented; and many other tricks that welleducated foxes must know.

The little family having been deprived of a father's care, the devoted mother has to provide for all their wants. She also must take every precaution for their safety, and so, as they are left alone when she is away, she keeps close to her home most of the day. Not until night comes and the little fellows are snugly tucked away in the cozy den does she sally forth on her hunting expeditions. Nor does she begin hunting near home, knowing full well the danger of arousing the suspicions of neighboring farmers; not until she has traveled a long distance away does she start the hunt in earnest. On a night when wild game is scarce, she will even visit the hen-roost of a farm-yard, for she well knows there is no going home empty-handed while those four husky youngsters are to be fed. And many a night the old moon follows her as she trots along on the homeward trip with a partridge or hen thrown over her shoulder, and sees the eager family scramble out of the den to meet her at the signal that tells them mother is coming. GEORGE A. KING.