Page:Smith - Number Stories of Long ago (1919).djvu/11

NUMBER STORIES and Hippias on parchment. He also told them about many of the number puzzles that have delighted boys and girls for thousands of years, so that the Tease found new tricks to play on all her friends, and the Crowd found much to think about as the stories were related by the great log fire.

And you who read these stories should imagine yourselves sitting by the great log fire and listening to the Story-Teller. You should seem to see in the flames and the shadows the moving pictures of those who played their parts in Number Land when the world was learning as you do.

Is this history? Never mind. What is history but a story, and is not every story a history of something? Why bother our heads over history? For us the story is the important thing. iv