The Dozen from Lakerim is a Fiction Adventure Book. The book tells that the Some people think it great fun to build a house of cards slowly and anxiously, and then knock it to pieces with one little snip of the finger. Or to fix up a snow man in fine style and watch a sudden thaw melt him out of sight. Or to write a name carefully, like a copy book, and with many curlicues, in the wet sand, and then scamper off and let the first high wave smooth it away as a boy's sponge wipes from his slate some such marvelous statement as, 12 × 12 = 120, or 384 ÷ 16 gives a "koshunt" of 25. When such things are erased it doesn't much matter; but there are occasions when it hurts to have Father Time come along and blot out the work you have taken great pains with and have put your heart into. Twelve young gentlemen in the town of Lakerim were feeling decidedly blue over just such an occasion. You may not find the town of Lakerim on the map in your geography. And yet it was very well known to the people that lived in it. And the Lakerim Athletic Club was very well known to those same people. And the Lakerim Athletic Club, or, at least the twelve founders of the club, were as blue as the June sky, because it seemed to them that Father Time old Granddaddy Longlegs that he is was playing a mean trick on them. For hadn't they given all their brain and muscle to building up an athletic club that should be a credit to the town and a terror to outsiders! And hadn't they given up every free hour for two years to working like Trojans? though, for that matter, who ever heard of any work the Trojans ever did that amounted to anything except the spending of ten years in getting themselves badly defeated by a big wooden hobby horse.
