among the treetops. The other was scared. He says: 'No, mother,
I never did fly, and I'm scared I'd get killed if I tried.' At
last the mother got mad and shoved him over. As soon as he felt
he was gone, he spread out his wings to save himself. The wings
were all right enough, and long before he struck the ground, he
was flying."



Chapter 61. Rolf Learns Something from Van

A man can't handle his own case, any more than a delirious doctor
kin give himself the right physic. --Saying of Si Sylvanne.

However superior Rolf might feel in the canoe or the woods, there
was one place where Van Cortlandt took the lead, and that was in
the long talks they had by the campfire or in Van's own shanty
which Quonab rarely entered.

The most interesting subjects treated in these were ancient
Greece and modern Albany. Van Cortlandt was a good Greek scholar,
and, finding an intelligent listener, he told the stirring tales
of royal Ilion, Athens, and Pergamos, with the loving enthusiasm
of one whom the teachers found it easy to instruct in classic
lore. And when he recited or intoned the rolling Greek heroics of
the siege of Troy, Rolf listened with an interest that was
strange, considering that he knew not a word of it. But he said,
"It sounded like real talk, and the tramp of men that were all
astir with something big a-doing."