MISCELLANEOUS 
VII 
it for modern generations to accom- 
plish. Said Wilson Flagg: 
“Then will you feel that mankind are 
unhappy only as they wander from the 
simplicity of nature and that we may 
regain our lost paradise as soon as we 
have learned to love nature more than 
art, and the heaven of such a place as 
this more than the world of cities and 
palaces.” 
In a beautiful home on Riverside 
Drive, New York City, a little girl 
climbed on my lap as I sat in an arm- 
chair, while her grandmother sat at 
one side and her mother in front of me, 
and said : “Are you going to take me 
to where the fairies live? Are there 
truly tall trees out there, like I see in 
the picture books ? Can you walk under 
them? Are there birds and butterflies 
too ? Can I see them ?” 
“Yes,” I said, “little Estelle,” (this 
name is fictitious but the account is of 
an actual experience) “in three weeks 
you and I and happy playmates will for 
the first time go into that fairyland, and 
you may write to tell your mother and 
grandmother that fairyland is true.” It 
was a joy to see the little child’s soul 
leap into her eyes. Three weeks later 
the dream came true under tall trees. 
She who had left New York and the 
care of her parents had for the first 
time entered into the child’s kingdom 
of happiness further and deeper than 
any adult can realize. 
The child delights to read about 
fairyland and to think about it, but to 
realize it and to live in it is happiness 
beyond words. Little Estelle’s expe- 
rience I have seen repeated time and 
again and, father and mother, the 
fonder you are of that daughter the 
more you will want her to be another 
one of the great band of little Estelles. 
You can buy a book with beautiful 
illustrations of fairyland but, please, I 
beg of you, do not turn it into a will-o’- 
the-wisp, do not make it as tantalizing 
as that mouse before the cat, but make 
the beautiful fairylands of this world, 
as Whittier calls them, the real things 
of childhood and let your little Estelle 
enjoy every bit of the paradise while 
she may. It is better than the world of 
cities and palaces. 
How shall you do this? Write, or 
telephone for a personal call, to Ed- 
ward F. Bigelow. ArcAdiA : Sound 
Beach, Connecticut, and he will tell 
you. 
Holes Upside Down. 
Two men were waiting for a train 
and one said : “I will ask you a ques- 
tion, and if I can not answer my own 
question, I will buy the tickets. Then 
you ask a question, and if you can not 
answer your own, you buy the tickets.” 
The other agreed to this. “Well,” the 
first man said, “you see those rabbit- 
holes? How do they dig those holes 
without leaving any dirt around them ?” 
The other confessed : “I don’t know. 
That’s your question, so answer it your- 
self.” The first man winked and re- 
plied : “They begin at the bottom and 
dig up !” “But,” said the second man, 
“how do they get at the bottom to be- 
gin?” “That’s your question,” was the 
first man’s rejoinder. “Answer it your- 
self.” The other man bought the 
tickets. — Boston Post. 
This alleged joke, copied from the 
“Boston Post” by “The Literary Di- 
gest,” has been widely circulated. It is 
a revision of an old New England folk- 
lore tale that in the revision has from 
the natural history standpoint been 
badly damaged. There is earth around 
rabbit holes but none around chipmunk 
holes. John Burroughs calls attention 
to the fact that from time immemorial 
what the chipmunk does with its earth 
has been a moot question, but so far 
as can be ascertained the first explana- 
tion of the problem was made by The 
Guide to Nature in an article pub- 
lished a few years ago in regard to a 
pet chipmunk. In February, 1909, Mr. 
Frank S. Morton, Portland, Maine, 
states the old problem and then ex- 
plains : 
“As I imagined it would be, the 
earth was a great source of comfort 
and immediately on being placed in it 
she would begin to dig. She made the 
earth fly so that I one day placed my 
hands at the side of the jar so that the 
earth would not fly over the room. She 
began packing the earth against my 
hands and was soon halfway to the 
bottom of the jar. It was then that I 
observed that after digging away the 
dirt with her fore feet like any bur- 
rowing animal, and throwing it under 
her body, she whirled around and be- 
gan tamping and packing it away with 
her head, using it as a battering ram 
and packing in the earth at each side 
and when possible at the top. To fur- 
ther try her I placed my hands down 
