air of self-sufficiency in knowledge which he already has. No need for such a one to search farther, not even in the doctrines and principles of his own belief. He seems to prefer to live in the past. This sort of mind-attitude "whatever is, is good enough," may be the easy way of life, but it is not productive of encouraging results.

It has taken great men to affect profoundly the history of the world. Such men have exercised indomitable power, they have not been daunted by any sort of opposition, rebuff, or persecution. They have been the very "Pillars of Hercules" in support of their cause. Their followers have been willing to be led, and through their unwillingness to think out the purpose of their action, they have. failed to secure much of the richness inherent in the cause for which they so tamely stood. They did not feel the full force of participation. And are not we, today, held as firmly by this power of inertia as were they? Are we not as loath to overcome this lethargic attitude as any people have ever been?

This criticism should not be applicable to Latter-day Saints who should be alert for every opportunity for the acquirement of knowledge. The Lord has emphasized his desire for our progress individually in a revelation given in 1832: "Yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom: seek learning even by study, and also by faith." Now read on about six or eight para

graphs, then turn back, in this same section 88, Doc. and Cov. and read the commandment of the Lord to you, to me, to all his people, contained in verses 77, 78, 79. Are we not to understand from this that our Heavenly Father wants us to become individually intelligent as well as a highly enlightened people?

Is not each for himself to acquire as full and complete knowledge of all things as lies within his power to get? This shall be his glory: for, "if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his diligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come." Doc. and Cov. Sec. 130, v. 19. Now it seems that we, whose faith leads us to a full belief in this declaration of the Lord, should throw off whatever influence inertia has exercised over us, and bestir ourselves to a diligent pursuit of that knowledge which will entitle us to places of honor and trust in the celestial world. And through our diligence, and the application of our time to the preparation necessary to share honors with Christ Himself, assist in the glorification of our Heavenly Father whose glory is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. saved in groups, blind obedience to leaders will not accomplish it, it is and must be an individual affair; otherwise we are shut out from every possible means of progress here and hereafter.

We cannot be

In the beginning he would have nothing to do with her. Fifteen minutes after she moved into the little bungalow beside his own brick house he was made to know of her presence. Also just then he was made to know that she had red hair and a cat. His first knowledge of her stopped right here; and he did his best to keep from ever knowing more. But to no great success, which, in the end, was fortunate-for him. One reason for his so earnestly trying not to know any more was that she was a child, and according to his ideas "child" was another name for pestilential noise. Truth is, he hated noise worse than snakes. His name was Lewellyn Cadwallader Burbidge, and, until one really knew him, he was every bit as formidable as it sounds. He was thirty years old, prematurely grave, unmarried, and rheumatic. In addition to all that, he was a writer of storieswhich may or may not have been bad, as to that I can not say. But anyway he was firmly convinced that he could not write his best stories with the turmoil and confusion of a child around anywhere at all close around so he didn't want her around. But somehow she failed utterly to understand this, which, in the end, was fortunate for them both.

And so, fifteen minutes after she moved in she stood in her own front porch, with a large maltese cat under one arm, looking curiously over at Lewellyn who sat in his own front porch, trying to think up a plot for that story he was going to write tomorrow. On her head was a man's

black, slouch hat-with the front brim chirpily turned up; she was leaning forward on the bannister rail, her chubby, bare legs poked between the spindles.

"Hello! you over there," suddenly, and very loudly she called. "My name is Mary Margaret Murphey. We've just moved in."-Here she held up the cat for him to see- "This is Teadie. Just as soon as mother gives me my bread and jam I'm coming over to see you."

Burbidge paid no attention to her. The thread of his pot was shaping up nicely; and it was no part of his intention to break it that he might answer this babbling child. Impassive as the Indian on a nickle he sat on and utterly ignored Mary Margaret Murphey; but Mary, it would seem, was not the kind to be ignored-for long. For very presently she flurried out of doors and up to the hedge which separated the two yards. She thrust her head through the hedge, and in so doing brushed off her hat, disclosing a tangle of auburn curls that brought to mind those little spiral feathers in a duck's tail.

"Hey, you!" Mary Margaret insisted. "You man on the porch over there! Look here! This is Teadie. She's my cat. Look at her. You man on the porch over there--I say, looka-here! Look!-Look!-LOOK!"

Burbidge looked her way briefly; then he arose and indignantly went indoors. It settled the interview; but it did not settle Mary.

The next day Burbidge was writing away full tilt down in his studio. This was a whitewashed chicken

house, snugged off in the back yard amid a jungle of sun flowers. As chance would have it a mulberry tree which stood in the Murphey back yard shaded Burbidge's favorite studio window. And beside this window he sat: the long, nervous fingers of his left hand clenched in his mane of dirt colored hair. Tense to the breaking point was he, groping for his climax, his forehead rumpled with a frown.

Suddenly a large, pink, mushy mulberry plunked against his left eye glass totally obscuring his vision in that lense. But with his one seeable eye he looked up and discovered his disturber, and by the purple flush which overspread his face he was angered. In the wink of a lash he came out of his studio door, bristling. In spite of his rheumatism, and the dignity that we somehow expect to find in a writer, the next instant found Burbidge straddling the Murphey fence, face to face with Mary.

But Mary was not abashed in the least. Her skirt was pinned into a kangaroo pouch, and this held Teadie; and busily she continued to stuff her mouth with red-juice-squirting mulberries. Burbidge was close enough now-for the first time-to detect a small family of freckles on the bridge of Mary's snubby little nose, and an illegally deep cleft in her chin. Mary looked at Burbidge, threw back her head, and laughed heartily. And the freckles became as tiny, brown, cockleboats jounced about on smiling waves. Burbidge glared. Mary extended him a hand filled wih mulberries.

"Have some," she invited with the ease born of her six and a half years. "They're mighty good-I knew you'd come up. Can't I and Teadie come over and play in your little white house sometime?"

A cat all sizzle and spit and bounce: a child as volatile as champagne, voluable enough to shame a phonograph-for these two to invade the privacy of his work-shop! Burbidge's rather clear blue eyes became hard as agate, snapped.

"Little girl," he spoke grimly, "if I catch you in my yard I shall spank you."

At this Mary's eyes of more than heavenly blue grew gradually saucerbig. Then slowly her face broke into a grin that was unparalleled for width, engaging beyond words. And a jay bird on a by-limb was startled to wing by the cascade of laughter she suddenly released.

"Oh, but you do play funny," she exclaimed. "The funniest ever. But I knew I'd like you. 'Cause 'cause 'cause well, maybe its 'cause you walk so hippity-hop."

After this mulberry episode Burbidge was downright unchristian to Mary. He passed her by daily. His afternoon walk brought this about. For, on the horse-block out in front of her house, Mary was always sitting as Burbidge came by of an afternoon. And it seemed that she was there on purpose to give him a lively, cordial greeting day by day.

"Hello!" would ring down the street to greet him as he emerged from his own front yard. Mary's favorite posture was to hug both bare knees beneath her dimpled chin, while Teadie purred around and over her. And so composed she would rock backward and forward, pivoting herself on the block to face him, as Burbidge approached. Thus, affably, day after day, she jabbered at him, apparently never at a loss for cheery conversation, never a moment faltering in her drum fire of family gossip, confidences, questions, and personalities. Like as not: "What did you have for dinner to

day? We had ice cream. It was banana ice cream, too; and Teadie wouldn't eat a drop. Where do you go every afternoon? You walk with a stick all the time, don't you? I'm going to ask mother to let me go to walk with you sometime-mayn't I?" As a grand finale flung at the distantly retreating back of Mr. Burbidge, in a nervously high, juvenile crescendo "M-A-Y-N'T I-S-A-Y?"

To these neighborly sallies Burbidge never deigned any reply. Chin up, eyes forward, mouth studiously locked, afternoon after afternoon, he would limp by sociable Mary, returning her less than the suspicion of a word, wink, nod, or grunt.

However, one afternoon-it must have been an uncommonly good lit erary morning-Mr. Burbidge came up street mildly whistling to himself. Apparently not a wisp of cloud darkened the horizon of his mind. Mary Margaret was nowhere to be seen today. Indeed this may have had something to do with Burbidge's happy frame. Be that as it may, just as he reached the horse block where Mary always sat, but was not today, Burbidge involuntarily started, paused, looked down, as if expecting her to come to view out of the horse block, or the ground and shoot him full of words as usual.

But no Mary. It was to be seen that Burbidge's brow puckered exactly as one vaguely yet distinctly perturbed.

Burbidge went on down the street. But in going, it must be confessed, he paid little or no heed to his footsteps. Now and then he would look back. The horse block didn't look right without Mary somehow. that he was interested in Mary, it was merely that his subconscious mind felt momentarily jostled out of its daily orbit,

Not

Presently Burbidge neared the Murphey corner: He was looking backward and walking slowly for ward at the time. So he did not see the strange figure that came from behind a monster oak beside the curb, and squatted directly in his line of travel. There were two figures, to be exact, and equally outlandish looking they were.

One could not greatly have exceeded thirty-six inches in height. and it was wierdly caparisoned in at torn, lace, window curtain-drapped overshoulder, somewhat after the fashion of a Spanish dancing girl and her mantilla. Her bare feet slopped about in high-heel slippers, which were gilded over, and very pointed of toe. From her frizzly bay tresses drooped what to a keen eye might have been recognized as an ostrich plume. A monstrous sickly pink, this plume, moth eaten, and wry-necked to a ridiculous degree. This unique figure was Mary.

The other funny was Teadie. Teadie was arrayed in a green plaid cap, such as monkeys are sometimes made to wear. It was a lineal descendant of the "wee cappie" of Scottish fame: brimless, creased in the middle, a rakish little rosette on one side. And it was furnished with a chin strap, which passed beneath. Teadie's chin. In passable imitation of a kilt, only it stood out stiffly like a ballet skirt, Teadie had about her middle a red, fluted article that had once done duty as a candle shade.

With head averted, Burbidge walked into them. With a rheumatic .groan he sat down upon the brick pavement. But crusty disposition or no, Burbidge had a sense of humor, and the jar he came by evidently dislocated the lid of his funny box. He

#

had no idea of getting downright chummy with that awful brat.

All he did was to extend a reservedly polite attitude toward her. Of course Mary Margaret, alias Princess Squibbs now, sat on the horseblock as of old. Likewise Burbidge still took his daily walks. And it is a fact worthy of relation, after that memorable fall Burbidge seemed to walk better, less hippity-hop as Mary put it. True, he still carried his silver headed cane, but now it seemed more as a companion, less a servant than of yore.

And then one afternoon, after a morning of showers, Mr. Burbidge chanced to reach the horse-block precisely with a bad mannered zephyr that came from the opposite way. This rowdy zephyr lifted Mr. Burbidge's black, velour hat from his head, and hurled it down in a nearby puddle of red clay mud and water. Huge was the puddle, and