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By the end of October, with the dispersal of foliage that has served all su as a screen for whatever sin to perceive the rise of our autuossip At this season of the year, in our towns of moderate size and ambition, where apartment houses have not yet condensed and at the same time sequestered the population, one may look over back yard beyond back yard, both up and down the street; especially if one takes the trouble to sit for an hour or so daily, upon the top of a high fence at about the middle of a block

Of course an adult who followed such a course would be thought peculiar, no doubt he would be subject to inimical comathered for thees denied their parents and elders, and a boy can do such a thing as this to his full content, without anybody's thinking about it at all So it was that Herbert Illingsworth Atwater, Jr, sat for a considerable time upon such a fence, after school hours, every afternoon of the last week in October; and only one person particularly observed him or was stimulated to any mental activity by his procedure Even at that, this person was affected only because she was Herbert's relative, of an age sympathetic to his and of a sex antipathetic

In spite of the fact that Herbert, thus seriously disporting himself on his father's back fence, attracted only an audience of one (and she hostile at a rather distant ) his behaviour ht piquant by anybody After cli to the top of the fence he would produce from interior pockets a sravely alert, his manner more than businesslike; yet nobody could have failed to co himself, especially when his attitude beca himself at adroit ease, his feet one before the other on the inner rail, below the top of the boards, and with eyes draaze sternly in the direction of some object orsatisfied hi or other, he would sit and decisively enter a note in his memorandum-book

He was not always alone; soh shorter than Herbert, about as old; and this companion was inspired, it see Herbert's own actions Like Herbert he would sit upon the top of the high fence; like Herbert he would rise at intervals, for the better study of so this side the horizon; then, also like Herbert, he would sit again and write firmly in a little notebook And seldom in the history of the world have any such sessions been invested by the participants with so intentional an appearance of importance