PROLOGUE. 



Many years ago a little girl lived in Concord, who 

 loved everything out of doors — the air, the clouds, the 

 hills, the running water, the birds and the flowers. 

 She especially loved the birds, because they were alive. 

 She wanted to know their names, but nobody could 

 tell her. Her people did not know; her teachers did 

 not know; she never found anybody who did know. 

 Nothing of that sort was ever taught in the schools, 

 and yet they were always telling how good the schools 

 were in those days. She used sometimes to wonder if 

 it were wicked to want to know about things that she 

 saw out-doors, because everything of that sort was 

 religiously kept out of the schools. 



She learned to read and spell up at the "Little 

 Brick, ' ' and that knowledge has always stood by her ; 

 but her days at the old Merrimack Grammar were 

 spent over Walton's Card (adding up figures that 

 meant nothing to get results that nobody wanted to 

 know); partial payments; Quackenbos's Grammar; 

 and the geography of Central Africa (that represented 

 all the world outside of Concord). She has never met 

 a partial payment in real life (of the kind the arith- 

 metic taught) ; Quackenbos's Grammar has become as 



