HE vicissitudes of the Tom Playfair manna script would alone make a story. How it was written over seven years ago, for the sake of a. College class, and with no ulterior thought of public. Cation; how portions of it gradually found their way into print; how the writer hesitated for years whether to consign the remaining parts to the book publisher or to the waste-basket; how the cordial reception of Percy Wynn, and the kind words con cerning Tom Playfair from critics and from read ers inspirited him to take the venerable manuscript -done at all manner of odd times, in lead pencil and ink, upon all sorts and conditions of paper from his trunk, and subsequently devote no small part of his vacation days (july, August, 1891) to its revisal; how the valued advice and kind words of literary friends served him in the revision — are not all these things indelibly impressed upon the author's memory? And now he ventures to offer this story to the boys and girls of the land, in the hope that it may afford them healthful pleasure.