

The Founder of a City 



Helex Lee Sherwood 

 New York City 



I 



A ROYAL WEDDING 



Under a flat stone in the garden there was great excitement one 

 sunny morning in late August, for a marvellous wedding was about 

 to take place. If you had walked between the rows of autumn 

 flowers of royal gold and purple and the ripe melons and egg-plant, 

 or under the loaded apple trees you would not have noticed, proba- 

 bly, the little, flat, gray stone at the foot of one of the trees. But if 

 you had chanced to sit down near it you could never have guessed 

 what was happening beneath it, nor have heard the quick, nimble 

 steps of thousands of tiny feet and the little insect voices. You 

 have never heard of so grand an occasion as this was to be, nor of so 

 strange a wedding — of all the royal brides and grooms in the garden ! 



Under the stone there was a great city of ants, with well built 

 streets leading downward to galleries and chambers of all sizes and 

 shapes. Some of them were used for nurseries — fitted with hun- 

 dreds of baby ants. Others were built around dandelion or grass 

 roots where herds of snowy or green ant cows were stabled and 

 pastured. There were secret pathways winding to hidden places 

 of retreat ; and on the surface of the ground beneath the stone, the 

 entrances to the city from the vast world outside were guarded 

 and concealed by pillars and barriers, and watched by tiny sen- 

 tinels with quivering antennae that caught the scent of every 

 breath. There was no lonely spot in all the city ; the tiny brown 

 ants were always passing back and forth with quick steps full of 

 eager energy. It was a wonderful energy, which only a few of us 

 possess who live in human cities. It was a ceaseless and untiring 

 spirit, enduring hunger and danger and weariness for the sake of 

 the ant children who would grow up to keep this city living and to 

 go out and build new cities under other stones in the garden. 



As soon as the sun had warmed the stone a little on this morning 

 one of the princesses of the city came hurrying from a hidden room 

 to the top, as if she knew it was her wedding day. She was a 

 beautiful creature three times as large as the worker ants of the 

 city. From the tip of her forehead to the sting on the end of her 



253 



