many hundreds of columns of gratuitous publicity.
The Atlantic Monthly had discovered something different, even though that magazine may have afterards wished the job had been left to others.
A volume would hardly suffice to summarize the personality of the nature-tutored child who at the age of six, so the diary would have us believe, confided her most intimate heart secrets to Michael Angelo Sanzio Raphael (a fir tree), and whose associates, instead of people, were Lars Porsena of Clusium (a crow), Thomas Chatterton Jupiter Zeus (a most dear wood rat), Brave Horatius (a Shepherd dog), Peter Paul Rubens (a pet pig) and other characters with equally classical appellations. My first impression of Opal was that of a vibrant, fluttery, exotic, whimsical person, informed strangely beyond her years, eager, deeply earnest and seriously religious. She later became to mean inexplicable enigma.
Opal told me her plans for the Junior Endeavor for the coming year, already well advanced while the convention was yet in session. She was going out among the children of the state to tell them of God. She was going to interest them in Endeavor work through stories of His fairy creatures that roam the fields and flutter in the air. She was going to give them messages whispered by the flowers and trees, the flowing streams, the rocks of the mountains, the fairies of the air, the shells of the seas.
"How did you get your plans laid so quickly?" I wanted to know.
"I've been preparing for this for years," she explained innocently, frankly.
