THE CRACKER-JACK CLUB 235

was aware was the teacher’s desk bell calling us to work.

The whole hour had gone while we listened rapt to John’s
account of the historic siege and capture.

“Boy!” John exclaimed as the bell rang, “‘it’s a cracker-

jack. Henty—With Wolfe in Canada. I'll bring it to-
morrow.”

So began that winter of noons which none of us will

ever forget. Most of us had read little beyond the stories
in our Readers. To read The Vision of Mirza, The Little
Midshipman, a story about David Swan, and a few poems
like The Glove and the Lions had carried us about as far as
our interest would go, and of the world of books we knew
practically nothing. Came John with Stevenson, Sir
Walter Scott, Captain Marryat, Henty, Lytton, and the
others, and caught us by the ears till we all but cried when
the bell rang, and he had to let us go.

Each time he told the story of a book, he managed

somehow or other to fit it to the hour. Just as the bell
would ring, John had finished, and as he got up from his
bench he would exclaim, “Boy! It’s a cracker-jack. Tl
bring it to-morrow.”

By habit we began to wait for that exclamation, and it

was not long, of course, till we began to substitute ‘“Cracker-
Jack” for the name, John, when we spoke to him. But
Cracker-Jack was too long, soon became shortened to
“Crack,” and ‘‘Crack”’ he is to this day.

It is not for his nickname, however, that we remember

him best, nor even for the stories that he himself told.
When Crack said “T’ll bring it to-morrow,’ he meant it. —
Next day Kidnapped, The White Company, Ben Hur, or
whatever it was, came to school with Crack and went home
with somebody else. So Crack became our library and
librarian as well as story-teller, and discovered to us the
great life beyond our valley, beyond ourselves, turning us
back to the beginnings of things where romance lay, and
forward into the mystery of our own lives as we might
dream to live them.