Emmy Lou Her Book and Heart   By: George Madden Martin (1866-1936)

EMMY LOU

HER BOOK & HEART

By GEORGE MADDEN MARTIN

And Illustrated By CHARLES LOUIS HINTON

"My Book and Heart Must Never Part." New England Primer

GROSSET & DUNLAP Publishers New York

Copyright, 1901, 1902, by S. S. McClure Co.

Copyright, 1902, by McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.

Fifteenth Impression

To My Sister THE AUNT CORDELIA of these stories, this book is affectionately inscribed

CONTENTS

PAGE The Right Promethean Fire 1 A Little Feminine Casabianca 29 Hare and Tortoise or the Bliss of Ignorance 49 "I Sing of Honour and the Faithful Heart" 81 The Play's the Thing 113 The Shadow of a Tragedy 135 All the Winds of Doctrine 165 The Confines of Consistency 193 A Ballad in Print o' Life 225 Venus or Minerva? 247

THE RIGHT PROMETHEAN FIRE

Emmy Lou, laboriously copying digits, looked up. The boy sitting in line in the next row of desks was making signs to her.

She had noticed the little boy before. He was a square little boy, with a sprinkling of freckles over the bridge of the nose and a cheerful breadth of nostril. His teeth were wide apart, and his smile was broad and constant. Not that Emmy Lou could have told all this. She only knew that to her the knowledge of the little boy concerning the things peculiar to the Primer World seemed limitless.

And now the little boy was beckoning Emmy Lou. She did not know him, but neither did she know any of the seventy other little boys and girls making the Primer Class.

Because of a popular prejudice against whooping cough, Emmy Lou had not entered the Primer Class until late. When she arrived, the seventy little boys and girls were well along in Alphabetical lore, having long since passed the a, b, c of initiation, and become glibly eloquent to a point where the l, m, n, o, p slipped off their tongues with the liquid ease of repetition and familiarity.

"But Emmy Lou can catch up," said Emmy Lou's Aunt Cordelia, a plump and cheery lady, beaming with optimistic placidity upon the infant populace seated in parallel rows at desks before her.

Miss Clara, the teacher, lacked Aunt Cordelia's optimism, also her plumpness. "No doubt she can," agreed Miss Clara, politely, but without enthusiasm. Miss Clara had stepped from the graduating rostrum to the school room platform, and she had been there some years. And when one has been there some years, and is already battling with seventy little boys and girls, one cannot greet the advent of a seventy first with acclaim. Even the fact that one's hair is red is not an always sure indication that one's temperament is sanguine also.