She was a slight, winsome creature whose plaited locks hung in two strands forward over her shoulders and reached to her waist.

Slowly, though, there were fewer and fewer of the winsome creatures in and out of Fort Hold.

The word "leaders," in this case, is spoken with lilting voice and bright eyes, conveying that these are especially winsome creatures with endowments not quite of this world.

Plus: A redesigned and refined Sophisticated Traveler magazine celebrates a splendor of tulips in the Netherlands and visits with a particularly winsome small creature in Madagascar.

He is such a winsome creature, in fact, that many of his adversaries - among them, developers, engineers and owners of coastal property who favor the laissez-faire development of beaches - say they can't help liking him.

Also primitive in flavor are the quaint walking-fish fabric sculptures of Deborah Banyas of Ohio, whose imaginative and winsome creatures are exotically colored.

For example, in "Depth," a series of pencil drawings and wood engravings, he includes winsome and cartoonlike creatures with large eyes.

A splendor of tulips - our first photo cover - starts off this new issue, and a visit with a particularly winsome small creature in Madagascar ends it.