the wings of their aircraft are usually painted in striped colors that blend with the sea and sky. When well up in the air they can see objects at a considerable distance beneath the surface of the water, just as the fish-hawk locates his prey. Submarines fifty feet under water are easily picked up and followed by the aëroplanes, and mine-fields, too, may be clearly seen by the keen-eyed pilots of the air.

They are the "eyes of the fleet," and if we had had but one at the time of the Spanish War, the fleet would have soon located Cervera's

may be the rôle of the birdmen to shun battle and fly back with news of the enemy.

Perhaps the best protection against the Zeppelins, that "know no frontiers," and against the raids of enemy ships will be the aërial coast patrol that both naval and military experts have worked for. The first American unit, operating with the mosquito fleet (as an assemblage of small craft is called), composed of destroyers and motor-boats off the Atlantic Coast last summer, located the ships of the attacking fleet as well as submerged mines. With two to three

squadron in Santiago Harbor. It might have found the Spanish ships before they reached that haven and ended the war then and there. So we can now see how our new aërial fleet will sweep away the "fog of war" in future battles. It was Wellington who complained that he could only guess what was going on "on the other side of the hill," for in those days all scouting was limited to the cavalry.

One of the greatest services that our air-fleet will give in battle will be to fly well ahead of the fleet to watch the fall of her shells. Either by wireless or by dropping smoke-bombs that tell the story they will flash back to the guns the correct range. The kite-balloons, hovering just above our ships, will give a similar service. When the battle- and scout-cruisers speed far ahead of the battle-line, the dirigibles and seaplanes will go with them. Then may come a great fight between the enemy air-fleets, or it

times the speed of destroyers, they proved a great factor in finding and following submarines.

With a picket-line of fast sea-planes along our immense coast-line, operating fifty to a hundred miles offshore like so many winged sentinels, ships fifty miles distant could be seen. Back to the nearest shore radio would go news of the enemy's approach, throwing into action the fleet, the destroyers, and the submarine forces, and calling troops to the threatened section.

As fast as new machines are turned out, there are new volunteers from officers and enlisted men of both the navy and the marines to take the course at the navy's flying-school in Florida. Flying never loses its interest and thrill. To fly for the fleet adds to its charm, for it then has a purpose. Behind the fascination of it lies the lure of a new and powerful weapon of warfare that will fight its future battles thousands of feet

above deep-sea water. 7

Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow forever and forever.

TENNYSON.

THIS is the story of a princess of our own time and our own America-a princess who, while little more than a girl herself, was chosen to rule a kingdom of girls. It is a little like the story of Tennyson's "Princess," with her woman's kingdom, and very much like the happy, oldfashioned fairy-tale.

We have come to think it is only in fairytales that a golden destiny finds out the true, golden heart, and, even though she masquerades as a goose-girl, discovers the "kingly child" and brings her to a waiting throne. We are tempted to believe that the chance of birth and the gifts of wealth are the things that spell opportunity and success. But this princess was born in a little farm-house, at Colesville, New York, and to a daily round of hard work and plain living. But it was also a life of high thinking and rich enjoyment of what each day brought.

"Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous!" said the sage of Concord. So it was with little Alice Freeman. As she picked wild strawberries on the hills, and climbed the apple-tree to lie for a blissful minute in a nest of swaying blossoms under the blue sky, she was, as she said, "happy all over." The trappings of royalty can add nothing to one who knows how to be royally happy in gingham.

But Alice was not always following the pasture path to her friendly brook, or running across the fields with the calling wind, or dancing with her shadow in the barn-yard, when even the prosy hens stopped pecking corn for a minute to watch. She had work to do for Mother. When she was only four, she could dry the dishes without dropping one; and when she was six, she could be trusted to keep the three toddlers younger than herself out of mischief.

"My little daughter is learning to be a real little mother," said Mrs. Freeman, as she went about her work of churning and baking without an anxious thought.

It was Sister Alice who pointed out the robin's nest, and found funny turtles and baby toads to play with. She took the little brood with her to

hunt eggs in the barn and to see the ducks sail around like a fleet of boats on the pond. When Ella and Fred were wakened by a fearsome noise at night, they crept up close to their little mother, who told them a story about the funny screech-owl in its hollow-tree home.

"It is the ogre of mice and bats, but not of little boys and girls," she said.

"It sounds funny now, Alice," they whispered. "It's all right since you told the story."

When Alice was seven a change came in the home. The father and mother had some serious talks, and then it was decided that Father should go away for a time, for two years, to study to be a doctor.

"It is hard to be chained to one kind of life when all the time you are sure that you have powers and possibilities that have never had a chance to come out in the open," she heard her father say one evening. "I have always wanted to be a doctor; I can never be more than a halfhearted farmer."

"You must go to Albany now, James," said the dauntless wife. "I can manage the farm until you get through your course at the medical college; and then, when you are doing work into which you can put your whole heart, a better time must come for all of us."

"How can you possibly get along?" he asked in amazement. "How can I leave you for two years to be farmer, and father and mother, too?"

"There is a little bank here," she said, taking down a jar from a high shelf in the cupboard and jingling its contents merrily. "I have been saving bit by bit for just this sort of thing. And Alice will help me," she added, smiling at the child who had been standing near looking from father to mother in wide-eyed wonder. "You will be the little mother while I take Father's place for a time, won't you, Alice?"

"It will be cruelly hard on you all," said the father, soberly. "I cannot make it seem right."

"Think how much good you can do afterward," urged his wife. "The time will go very quickly when we are all thinking of that. It is not hard to endure for a little for the sake of 'a gude time coming'-a better time not only for us, but for many beside. For I know you will be the true sort of doctor, James."

Alice never quite knew how they did manage during those two years, but she was quite sure that work done for the sake of a good to come is all joy.

"I owe much of what I am to my milkmaid days," she said.

She was always sorry for children who do not grow up with the sights and sounds of the country. "One is very near to all the simple, real things of life on a farm," she used to say.

ALICE FREEMAN PALMER.

"There is a dewy freshness about the early outof-door experiences, and a warm wholesomeness about tasks that are a part of the common lot. A country child develops, too, a responsibility-a power to do and to contrive-that the city child, who sees everything come ready to hand from a near-by store, cannot possibly gain However much some of my friends may deplore my own early struggle with poverty and hard work, I can heartily echo George Eliot's boast: 'But were another childhood-world my share, I would be born a little sister there.''

When Alice was ten years old the family moved from the farm to the village of Windsor,

where Dr. Freeman entered upon his life as a doctor, and where Alice's real education began. From the time she was four she had, for varying periods, sat on a bench in the district school, but for the most part she had taught herself. At Windsor Academy she had the advantage of a school of more than average efficiency.

"Words do not tell what this old school and place meant to me as a girl," she said years afterward. "Here we gathered abundant Greek, Latin, French, and mathematics; here we were taught truthfulness, to be upright and honorable; here we had our first loves, our first ambitions, our first dreams, and some of our first disappointments. We owe a large debt to Windsor Academy for the solid groundwork of education that it laid."

More important than the excellent curriculum and wholesome associations, however, was the influence of a friendship with one of the teachers, a young Harvard graduate who was supporting himself while preparing for the ministry. He recognized the rare nature and latent powers of the girl of fourteen, and taught her the delights of friendship with nature and with books, and the joy of a mind trained to see and appreciate. He gave her an understanding of herself, and aroused the ambition, which grew into a fixed resolve, to go to college. But more than all, he taught her the value of personal influence. "It is people that count," she used to say. "The truth and beauty that are locked up in books and in nature, to which only a few have the key, begin really to live when they are made over into human character. Disembodied ideas may mean little or nothing; it is when they are 'made flesh' that they can speak to our hearts and minds."

As Alice drove about with her father when he went to see his patients and saw how this true "doctor of the old school" was a physician to the mind as well as the body of those who turned to him for help, she came to a further realiza

tion of the truth: It is people that count.]

"It must be very depressing to have to associate with bodies and their ills all the time," she ventured one day when her father seemed more than usually preoccupied. She never forgot the light that shone in his eyes as he turned and looked at her.

"We can't begin to minister to the body until we understand that spirit is all," he said. "What we are pleased to call body is but one expression -and a most marvelous expression-of the hidden life

'that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.''