MAIDU CREATION MYTH – A Free Story

When this world was filled with water, Earth-Maker floated upon it, kept floating about. Nowhere in the world could he see even a tiny bit of earth. No persons of any kind flew about. He went about in this world, the world itself being invisible, transparent like the sky.

He was troubled. “I wonder how, I wonder where, I wonder in what place, in what country, we shall find a world!” he said. “You are a very strong man, to be thinking of this world,” said Coyote. “I am guessing in what direction the world is, then to that distant land let us float!” said Earth-Maker.

In this world they kept floating along, kept floating along, hungry, having nothing to eat. “You will die of hunger,” said Coyote. Then he thought. “No, I cannot think of anything,” he said. “Well,” said Earth-Maker, “the world is large, a great world. If somewhere I find a tiny world, I can fix it up.”

Then he sang, “Where, little world, art thou?” It is said he sang, kept singing, sang all the time. “Enough!” he said, and stopped singing. “Well! I don’t know many songs (?),” he said. Then Coyote sang again, kept singing, asking, for the world, singing, “Where, O world, art thou.”‘ He sang, kept singing; then “Enough!” he said, “I am tired. You try again.”

So Earth-Maker sang. “Where are you, my great mountains, my world mountains?” he said. He sang, and all the time kept saying, “Where are you?” He stopped singing. “Enough!” he said. “You try also.” Coyote tried, kept singing. “My foggy mountains, where one goes about,” he said. “Well, We shall see nothing at all. I guess there never was a world anywhere,” said he. “I think if we find a little world, I can fix it very well,” said Earth-Maker.

As they floated along, they saw something like a bird’s nest. “Well! That is very small,” said Earth-Maker. “It is small. If it were larger, I could fix it. But it is too small,” he said. “I wonder how I can stretch it a little!” He kept saying, “What is the best way! How shall I make it larger!” So saying, he prepared it. He extended a rope to the east, to the south he extended a rope, to the west, to the northwest, and to the north he extended ropes.

When all were stretched, he said, “Well, sing, you who were the finder of this earth, this mud! ‘In the long, long, ago, Robin-Man made the world, stuck earth together, making this world.’ Thus mortal men shall say of you, in myth-telling.” Then Robin sang, and his world-making song sounded sweet. After the ropes were all stretched, he kept singing; then, after a time, he ceased.

Then Earth-Maker spoke to Coyote also. “Do you sing too,” he said. So he sang, singing, “My world, where one travels by the valley-edge; my world of many foggy mountains; my world where one goes zigzagging hither and thither; range after range,” he said, “I sing of the country I shall travel in. In such a world I shall wander,” he said.

Then Earth-Maker sang–sang of the world he had made, kept singing, until by and by he ceased. “Now,” he said, “it would be well if the world were a little larger. Let us stretch it!”–“Stop!” said Coyote. I speak wisely. This world ought to be painted with something, so that it may look pretty. What do ye two think?”

Then Robin-Man said, “I am one who knows nothing. Ye two are clever men, making this world, talking it over; if ye find anything evil, ye will make it good.”–“Very well,” said Coyote, “I will paint it with blood. There shall be blood in the world; and people shall be born there, having blood. There shall be birds born who shall have blood. Everything–deer, all kinds of game, all sorts of men without any exception–all things shall have blood that are to be created in this world. And in another place, making it red, there shall be red rocks. It will be as if blood were mixed up with the world, and thus the world will be beautiful,” he said. “What do you think about it?”–“Your words are good,” he said, “I know nothing.” So Robin-Man went off. As he went, he said, “I shall be a person who travels only in this way,” and he flew away.

Earth-Maker spoke: “You had better lie down here on your face.”–“All right!” said Coyote, and, kneeling down, he lay on his face. Then Earth-Maker stretched the world with his foot. Stretching it once, he extended it towards the east, extended it on that side; then to the south, then to the west, he stretched it; then to the northwest and to the north he stretched it. Having extended it only a little ways, he said, “All right!”

Coyote stood up and looked around. “Well, I think it would be better if this world were just large enough to go around it.” By and by Earth-Maker said, “You had better kneel down again, and lie flat on your belly. Do not look up. You must not!”–“Very well,” said Coyote, “I will not look up.” He lay down; and Earth-Maker, stretching the earth with his foot eastward, stretched it as far as it would go. He extended it fully toward the south, toward the west, toward the northwest, toward the north. “All right!” said he.

Coyote stood up, and, having risen, started to walk hither eastward. Earth-Maker, when he was left alone, stood for a time, then, departing, he went toward the south. In the direction of the sunset he went far around, going over to the northwest, going around to the north, going all the way around to the east. And having gone around, having returned to the spot where he had first turned off, he prepared things.

He made two white men; then he made others, white, but a little different. As he made them, he counted them. He kept on making them–made one black, then another almost black. Two of each only he made. Then he counted all the countries, and, as he counted, assigned them, gave them to the countries. “You are a country having this name, you shall have this people,” he said. “This sort of people, naming you, shall own the country. These people shall grow, shall keep on growing through many winters, through many dawns. They shall continue to grow until, their appointed winters being past, their dawns being over, this people having finished growing, shall be born,” he said. “Very many winters will have passed before they shall be born. And they shall have children, girls and boys; and these children, growing up, shall have children in their turn,” he said. When several winters have passed, there will be very many people.”

Then again, to another sort of people, he gave another country, saying, “This people, I leave you in this country, and ye shall be the owners of this land. Ye shall be a people with a name.” And they also were a different sort of people, a people with a name; and their country also was named, it is said. “Your country also shall have a name,” he said. “Ye too shall have a name, and your children shall fill the land, and every single child shall have a name,” he said. “There, growing steadily, many winters, many days, shall pass before ye are fully grown. Then ye shall possess this country,” he said.

Thereafter he spoke to another, again he gave a different kind of country to a different kind of people. He said, “Ye shall be a different-speaking and a different-looking people. Ye also shall possess a country,” he said.

“Your children, if they weary of this land, going from this country to one with another name, to a country that is good to live in, shall remain there. There every country shall be full of people, who will continue to be born,” he said. And then he divided the world among many. To one he gave one sort, to another he gave another. Ye shall all have different names,” he said. Finally he finished giving, he distributed all.

Then after a while, continuing on his way, he came hither, kept travelling; and after arriving in the middle of the world, he made other people. “Ye shall be mortal men like this,” he said; and, having made two, he left them. “Ye here, growing steadily, when so many winters shall have passed, very many winters, many days, ye shall be fully grown,” he said. “Then ye shall be mortal men, ye shall be born full-grown. This country shall have a name. Beyond these mountains there shall be another country, which also shall have a name. Ye shall not be born soon,” he said. Then he named everything, and, having left the people here in the middle of the world, he went away.

Continuing on his way, he went to all countries that were of the proper sort; and when he had gone as far as mortal men were to live, he stopped. Then there again he created two–two more, it is said, he laid down, and again two more. He kept counting them; and when he had counted them all, he spoke. “Ye shall remain here,” he said, “and your country shall have a name. Although living in a small country, in one that is not large, it shall be sufficient for you. This I leave; and growing continually, so many winters passing, very many winters passing, many days passing, ye shall be fully grown. And then ye, being fully grown, shall be born,” he said. “Then your food will grow,–different sorts of food, all kinds of food; and ye, being born with sufficient intelligence, will survive,” he said. Then he pushed them down under a gopher-hill.

He spoke again. “Ye, too, shall possess a small country. ‘Come, now! leave this country!’ (this ye must not say to others, wishing to take their land.) Ye shall be people who will not drive others away, driving them off to another country. Ye shall be different, ye shall name your country. Ye also shall be a differently named people. There, growing continually, many days being passed, many winters having passed, ye shall be born, when your birthday has passed,” he said. “Living there and having children, when other winters are passed, they will become a little larger, and will keep on thus, growing all the time, until, when enough winters shall have passed, always becoming more numerous, ye shall have enough people. Your children, all without exception, shall have names.

This country also, in the same way is named; all countries shall have names, just as yourselves. If ye are going to look at the country over there, then, when ye go, (ye shall say) ‘I am going to that place,’ naming it; then all people will understand where ye are going,” he said.

Then, counting the people on this side (in this direction), he left them; and, speaking to those on this side, he said, “Ye also shall be mortal men. So many winters passing over, (?) ye shall be born. All the time growing, each winter ye shall grow a little, a very little. Again, when the winter is over, continually growing, when many winters are passed, ye will have finished growing; then ye shall be born, full-grown. There ye also shall have a country, and your country shall be one bearing a name, and ye too shall be named,” he said. “Ye shall have children; and when your children have grown larger, then, looking all over this country, ye must tell them about it, teach them about it, naming the country and places, showing them and naming them to your children. ‘That is such and such a place, and that is such and such a mountain.’ So, when ye have caused them to learn this, teaching them, they shall understand even as ye do yourselves.”

Then, placing them between his thumb and finger, he snapped them away.

And when he had given countries thus to all that he had counted out, there was one pair left. “Ye also, ye shall be a, people speaking differently. There will be a little too many of you for you to have the same sort of a country also. So ye shall have that kind of a country, a great country,” he said. “Now, wherever I have passed along, there shall never be a lack of anything,” he said, and made motions in all directions. “The country where I have been shall be one where nothing is ever lacking. I have finished talking to you, and I say to you that ye shall remain where ye are to be born. Ye are the last people; and while, ye are to remain where ye are created, I shall return, and stay there. When this world becomes bad, I will make it over again; and after I make it, ye shall be born,” he said. Long ago Coyote suspected this, they say.

“This world will shake,” he said. “This world is spread out flat, the world is not stable. After this world is all made, by and by, after a long time, I will pull this rope a little, then the world shall be firm. I, pulling on my rope, shall make it shake. And now,” he said, “there shall be songs, they shall not be lacking, ye shall have them.” And he sang, and kept on singing until he ceased singing. “Ye mortal men shall have this song,” he said, and then he sang another; and singing many different songs, he walked along, kept walking until he reached the middle of the world; and there, sitting down over across from it, he remained.

But, in making the world, Robin-Man sang that which was pleasant to hear. He, they say, was the first created person,–a man whose song passed across the valleys, a man who found the world, a man who in the olden time sang very beautifully-sounding songs. And Earth-Maker, going along, and having passed by the middle of the world, made a house for himself, and remained there. That is as far as he went. That is all, they say.

From: Maidu Folklore, Myths & Legends

ISBN: 9788835858720

URL: https://store.streetlib.com/en/anon-e-mouse/maidu-folklore-myths-and-legends-18-legends-of-the-maidu-people

THE DECIMATION AND RECOVERY OF A NATIVE AMERICAN TRIBE

The MAIDU are an American Indian people of northern California. They reside in the central Sierra Nevada, in the watershed area of the Feather and American rivers. They also reside in Humbug Valley. In the Maiduan languages, Maidu means “man.”

 

Estimates for the pre-contact populations of Maidu (including the Konkow and Nisenan) was, in 1770, estimated to be 9,000. Sherburne F. Cook later raised this figure slightly, to 9,500.

After the arrival of the Europeans, Kroeber reported the population of the Maidu in 1910 as low as 1,100. The 1930 census counted only 93, following decimation by infectious diseases and social disruption with many moving away from their tribal lands. As of 1995, the Maidu population had recovered to an estimated 3,500 – still down 63% on their original number.

 

In approximately 1910, folklorist Roland B. Dixon spent time amongst them collecting and recording their folklore, myths and legends resulting in this volume of MAIDU FOLKLORE, MYTHS AND LEGENDS.

Herein you will find stories like:

The Maidu Creation Myth,
Coyote And Muskrat,
Coyote, The Mountain-Tossing People, And The Wind-Man,
Thunder-Boy And Lizard-Man,
Thunder And Mosquito, And The Theft Of Fire – plus many more.

 

That these myths and legends have survived is even more remarkable considering what the tribe went through. The 1995 population census indicates that the tribe is still in recovery.

For more information https://store.streetlib.com/en/anon-e-mouse/maidu-folklore-myths-and-legends-18-legends-of-the-maidu-people

A BEGGAR’S PALACE – A Free Story

From the ebook Sylvie and Bruno
The sequel to Alice in Wonderland
By Lewis Carrol

I said something, in the act of waking, I felt sure: the hoarse stifled cry was still ringing in my ears, even if the startled look of my fellow-traveler had not been evidence enough: but what could I possibly say by way of apology?

“I hope I didn’t frighten you?” I stammered out at last. “I have no idea what I said. I was dreaming.”

“You said ‘Uggug indeed!’” the young lady replied, with quivering lips that would curve themselves into a smile, in spite of all her efforts to look grave. “At least—you didn’t say it—you shouted it!”

“I’m very sorry,” was all I could say, feeling very penitent and helpless. “She has Sylvie’s eyes!” I thought to myself, half-doubting whether, even now, I were fairly awake. “And that sweet look of innocent wonder is all Sylvie’s, too. But Sylvie hasn’t got that calm resolute mouth—nor that far-away look of dreamy sadness, like one that has had some deep sorrow, very long ago——” And the thick-coming fancies almost prevented my hearing the lady’s next words.

“If you had had a ‘Shilling Dreadful’ in your hand,” she proceeded, “something about Ghosts—or Dynamite—or Midnight Murder—one could understand it: those things aren’t worth the shilling, unless they give one a Nightmare. But really—with only a medical treatise, you know——” and she glanced, with a pretty shrug of contempt, at the book over which I had fallen asleep.

Her friendliness, and utter unreserve, took me aback for a moment; yet there was no touch of forwardness, or boldness, about the child—for child, almost, she seemed to be: I guessed her at scarcely over twenty—all was the innocent frankness of some angelic visitant, new to the ways of earth and the conventionalisms—or, if you will, the barbarisms—of Society. “Even so,” I mused, “will Sylvie look and speak, in another ten years.”

“You don’t care for Ghosts, then,” I ventured to suggest, “unless they are really terrifying?”

“Quite so,” the lady assented. “The regular Railway-Ghosts—I mean the Ghosts of ordinary Railway-literature—are very poor affairs. I feel inclined to say, with Alexander Selkirk, ‘Their tameness is shocking to me’! And they never do any Midnight Murders. They couldn’t ‘welter in gore,’ to save their lives!”

“‘Weltering in gore’ is a very expressive phrase, certainly. Can it be done in any fluid, I wonder?”

“I think not,” the lady readily replied—quite as if she had thought it out, long ago. “It has to be something thick. For instance, you might welter in bread-sauce. That, being white, would be more suitable for a Ghost, supposing it wished to welter!”

“You have a real good terrifying Ghost in that book?” I hinted.

“How could you guess?” she exclaimed with the most engaging frankness, and placed the volume in my hands. I opened it eagerly, with a not unpleasant thrill (like what a good ghost-story gives one) at the ‘uncanny’ coincidence of my having so unexpectedly divined the subject of her studies.

It was a book of Domestic Cookery, open at the article ‘Bread Sauce.’

I returned the book, looking, I suppose, a little blank, as the lady laughed merrily at my discomfiture. “It’s far more exciting than some of the modern ghosts, I assure you! Now there was a Ghost last month—I don’t mean a real Ghost in—in Supernature—but in a Magazine. It was a perfectly flavourless Ghost. It wouldn’t have frightened a mouse! It wasn’t a Ghost that one would even offer a chair to!”

“Three score years and ten, baldness, and spectacles, have their advantages after all!” I said to myself. “Instead of a bashful youth and maiden, gasping out monosyllables at awful intervals, here we have an old man and a child, quite at their ease, talking as if they had known each other for years! Then you think,” I continued aloud, “that we ought sometimes to ask a Ghost to sit down? But have we any authority for it? In Shakespeare, for instance—there are plenty of ghosts there—does Shakespeare ever give the stage-direction ‘hands chair to Ghost’?”

The lady looked puzzled and thoughtful for a moment: then she almost clapped her hands. “Yes, yes, he does!” she cried. “He makes Hamlet say ‘Rest, rest, perturbed Spirit!’”

“And that, I suppose, means an easy-chair?”

“An American rocking-chair, I think——”

“Fayfield Junction, my Lady, change for Elveston!” the guard announced, flinging open the door of the carriage: and we soon found ourselves, with all our portable property around us, on the platform.

The accommodation, provided for passengers waiting at this Junction, was distinctly inadequate—a single wooden bench, apparently intended for three sitters only: and even this was already partially occupied by a very old man, in a smock frock, who sat, with rounded shoulders and drooping head, and with hands clasped on the top of his stick so as to make a sort of pillow for that wrinkled face with its look of patient weariness.

“Come, you be off!” the Station-master roughly accosted the poor old man. “You be off, and make way for your betters! This way, my Lady!” he added in a perfectly different tone. “If your Ladyship will take a seat, the train will be up in a few minutes.” The cringing servility of his manner was due, no doubt, to the address legible on the pile of luggage, which announced their owner to be “Lady Muriel Orme, passenger to Elveston, viâ Fayfield Junction.”

As I watched the old man slowly rise to his feet, and hobble a few paces down the platform, the lines came to my lips:—

“From sackcloth couch the Monk arose,
With toil his stiffen’d limbs he rear’d;
A hundred years had flung their snows
On his thin locks and floating beard.”

But the lady scarcely noticed the little incident. After one glance at the ‘banished man,’ who stood tremulously leaning on his stick, she turned to me. “This is not an American rocking-chair, by any means! Yet may I say,” slightly changing her place, so as to make room for me beside her, “may I say, in Hamlet’s words, ‘Rest, rest——’” she broke off with a silvery laugh.

‘COME, YOU BE OFF!’

“‘—perturbed Spirit!’” I finished the sentence for her. “Yes, that describes a railway-traveler exactly! And here is an instance of it,” I added, as the tiny local train drew up alongside the platform, and the porters bustled about, opening carriage-doors—one of them helping the poor old man to hoist himself into a third-class carriage, while another of them obsequiously conducted the lady and myself into a first-class.

She paused, before following him, to watch the progress of the other passenger. “Poor old man!” she said. “How weak and ill he looks! It was a shame to let him be turned away like that. I’m very sorry——” At this moment it dawned on me that these words were not addressed to me, but that she was unconsciously thinking aloud. I moved away a few steps, and waited to follow her into the carriage, where I resumed the conversation.

“Shakespeare must have traveled by rail, if only in a dream: ‘perturbed Spirit’ is such a happy phrase.”

“‘Perturbed’ referring, no doubt,” she rejoined, “to the sensational booklets peculiar to the Rail. If Steam has done nothing else, it has at least added a whole new Species to English Literature!”

“No doubt of it,” I echoed. “The true origin of all our medical books—and all our cookery-books——”

“No, no!” she broke in merrily. “I didn’t mean our Literature! We are quite abnormal. But the booklets—the little thrilling romances, where the Murder comes at page fifteen, and the Wedding at page forty—surely they are due to Steam?”

“And when we travel by Electricity—if I may venture to develop your theory—we shall have leaflets instead of booklets, and the Murder and the Wedding will come on the same page.”

“A development worthy of Darwin!” the lady exclaimed enthusiastically. “Only you reverse his theory. Instead of developing a mouse into an elephant, you would develop an elephant into a mouse!” But here we plunged into a tunnel, and I leaned back and closed my eyes for a moment, trying to recall a few of the incidents of my recent dream.

“I thought I saw——” I murmured sleepily: and then the phrase insisted on conjugating itself, and ran into “you thought you saw—he thought he saw——” and then it suddenly went off into a song:—

“He thought he saw an Elephant,
That practised on a fife:
He looked again, and found it was
A letter from his wife.
‘At length I realise,’ he said,
‘The bitterness of Life!’”

And what a wild being it was who sang these wild words! A Gardener he seemed to be—yet surely a mad one, by the way he brandished his rake—madder, by the way he broke, ever and anon, into a frantic jig—maddest of all, by the shriek in which he brought out the last words of the stanza!

It was so far a description of himself that he had the feet of an Elephant: but the rest of him was skin and bone: and the wisps of loose straw, that bristled all about him, suggested that he had been originally stuffed with it, and that nearly all the stuffing had come out.

Sylvie and Bruno waited patiently till the end of the first verse. Then Sylvie advanced alone (Bruno having suddenly turned shy) and timidly introduced herself with the words “Please, I’m Sylvie!”

“And who’s that other thing?” said the Gardener.

“What thing?” said Sylvie, looking round. “Oh, that’s Bruno. He’s my brother.”

“Was he your brother yesterday?” the Gardener anxiously enquired.

“Course I were!” cried Bruno, who had gradually crept nearer, and didn’t at all like being talked about without having his share in the conversation.

THE GARDENER

“Ah, well!” the Gardener said with a kind of groan. “Things change so, here. Whenever I look again, it’s sure to be something different! Yet I does my duty! I gets up wriggle-early at five——”

“If I was oo,” said Bruno, “I wouldn’t wriggle so early. It’s as bad as being a worm!” he added, in an undertone to Sylvie.

“But you shouldn’t be lazy in the morning, Bruno,” said Sylvie. “Remember, it’s the early bird that picks up the worm!”

“It may, if it likes!” Bruno said with a slight yawn. “I don’t like eating worms, one bit. I always stop in bed till the early bird has picked them up!”

“I wonder you’ve the face to tell me such fibs!” cried the Gardener.

To which Bruno wisely replied “Oo don’t want a face to tell fibs wiz—only a mouf.”

Sylvie discreetly changed the subject. “And did you plant all these flowers?” she said. “What a lovely garden you’ve made! Do you know, I’d like to live here always!”

“In the winter-nights——” the Gardener was beginning.

“But I’d nearly forgotten what we came about!” Sylvie interrupted. “Would you please let us through into the road? There’s a poor old beggar just gone out—and he’s very hungry—and Bruno wants to give him his cake, you know!”

“It’s as much as my place is worth!” the Gardener muttered, taking a key from his pocket, and beginning to unlock a door in the garden-wall.

“How much are it wurf?” Bruno innocently enquired.

But the Gardener only grinned. “That’s a secret!” he said. “Mind you come back quick!” he called after the children, as they passed out into the road. I had just time to follow them, before he shut the door again.

We hurried down the road, and very soon caught sight of the old Beggar, about a quarter of a mile ahead of us, and the children at once set off running to overtake him. Lightly and swiftly they skimmed over the ground, and I could not in the least understand how it was I kept up with them so easily. But the unsolved problem did not worry me so much as at another time it might have done, there were so many other things to attend to.

The old Beggar must have been very deaf, as he paid no attention whatever to Bruno’s eager shouting, but trudged wearily on, never pausing until the child got in front of him and held up the slice of cake. The poor little fellow was quite out of breath, and could only utter the one word “Cake!”—not with the gloomy decision with which Her Excellency had so lately pronounced it, but with a sweet childish timidity, looking up into the old man’s face with eyes that loved ‘all things both great and small.’

The old man snatched it from him, and devoured it greedily, as some hungry wild beast might have done, but never a word of thanks did he give his little benefactor—only growled “More, more!” and glared at the half-frightened children.

“There is no more!” Sylvie said with tears in her eyes. “I’d eaten mine. It was a shame to let you be turned away like that. I’m very sorry——”

I lost the rest of the sentence, for my mind had recurred, with a great shock of surprise, to Lady Muriel Orme, who had so lately uttered these very words of Sylvie’s—yes, and in Sylvie’s own voice, and with Sylvie’s gentle pleading eyes!

“Follow me!” were the next words I heard, as the old man waved his hand, with a dignified grace that ill suited his ragged dress, over a bush, that stood by the road side, which began instantly to sink into the earth. At another time I might have doubted the evidence of my eyes, or at least have felt some astonishment: but, in this strange scene, my whole being seemed absorbed in strong curiosity as to what would happen next.

When the bush had sunk quite out of our sight, marble steps were seen, leading downwards into darkness. The old man led the way, and we eagerly followed.

The staircase was so dark, at first, that I could only just see the forms of the children, as, hand-in-hand, they groped their way down after their guide: but it got lighter every moment, with a strange silvery brightness, that seemed to exist in the air, as there were no lamps visible; and, when at last we reached a level floor, the room, in which we found ourselves, was almost as light as day.

It was eight-sided, having in each angle a slender pillar, round which silken draperies were twined. The wall between the pillars was entirely covered, to the height of six or seven feet, with creepers, from which hung quantities of ripe fruit and of brilliant flowers, that almost hid the leaves.

In another place, perchance, I might have wondered to see fruit and flowers growing together: here, my chief wonder was that neither fruit nor flowers were such as I had ever seen before. Higher up, each wall contained a circular window of coloured glass; and over all was an arched roof, that seemed to be spangled all over with jewels.

A BEGGAR’S PALACE

With hardly less wonder, I turned this way and that, trying to make out how in the world we had come in: for there was no door: and all the walls were thickly covered with the lovely creepers.

“We are safe here, my darlings!” said the old man, laying a hand on Sylvie’s shoulder, and bending down to kiss her. Sylvie drew back hastily, with an offended air: but in another moment, with a glad cry of “Why, it’s Father!”, she had run into his arms.

“Father! Father!” Bruno repeated: and, while the happy children were being hugged and kissed, I could but rub my eyes and say “Where, then, are the rags gone to?”; for the old man was now dressed in royal robes that glittered with jewels and gold embroidery, and wore a circlet of gold around his head.

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A Free Story from the ebook Sylvie and Bruno
The sequel to Alice in Wonderland
By Lewis Carrol – with just as much silliness and fantasy as Alice in Wonderland

ISBN: 9788834181546

URL/Download Link: https://bit.ly/2XCSsZo

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THE PRINCE AND THE BAKER’S DAUGHTER – A Free Story

From the eBook “The Rainbow Cat” by Rose Fyleman

 

THERE was once a prince who was very brave, good and handsome. He was quite young, too, and before he settled down to learning how to rule the kingdom which would one day be his, he was sent by his father out a-travelling into the world.

 

The king gave his son a beautiful white horse and a bagful of big gold pieces, and told him to come back when the money was all spent.

 

His mother made him a blue velvet mantle embroidered with silver, and she also gave him a hat with a blue feather in it.

 

“I want my son to look nice when he goes out riding into the world,” she said.

 

He rode away on his white horse and turned to wave his hand to his mother and father
before he went over the hill-top.

 

“How handsome he looks,” said his mother, wiping away a tear or two.

 

“Well, that’s nothing to cry about,” said his father, and blew his nose. Then they went back into the palace and continued ruling.

 

The prince rode on and on.

 

Wherever he went people were very nice to him, even when he got beyond the borders of his own kingdom where he was no longer known.

 

It is not every day that a handsome prince comes riding along on a white horse, and moreover with a bagful of fine gold pieces to spend.

 

All the girls ran out to look at him as he passed, and when he stayed anywhere, even for a short time, people seemed to get to know about it at once and asked him to their houses and gave grand parties in his honour and made so much of him altogether that he was in some danger of getting thoroughly spoiled.

 

But he had been very well brought up, and he had a naturally amiable disposition.

 

Besides, he had always been told by his mother that if you are a prince you must try hard to behave as a prince should, and be modest, considerate, and very polite to everyone.

 

One morning close on midday, he came to a tiny village which he did not know at all.

 

He was rather hungry after his ride, and as he passed down the narrow little street he became aware of a delicious smell of new bread.

 

It came from the open door of the village baker’s, and as he glanced in he saw a pile of beautiful, crisp new rolls heaped up in a big white basket.

 

He got down off his horse and went in.

 

“I should like to buy one of those nice little rolls,” he said to the baker’s daughter, who stood behind the counter.

 

She was very pretty. She had blue, shining eyes and fair smooth hair, and when she smiled it was like sunshine on a flowery meadow.

 

The prince ate up his roll and then another and yet another, and while he ate he talked to the baker’s daughter. But no one can eat more than three rolls one after another, and at last he felt that the time had come to pay for what he had had and ride on his way.

 

But, as it happened, he had no small change, nothing but a gold piece such as those which he had in his bag.

 

The baker’s daughter hadn’t enough money in the whole shop to change such a big gold piece, her father having set off that very morning with all the money in the till in order to buy a sack of flour from the miller in the next village.

The Prince sampled the girls wares

She had never even seen so large a gold coin before. She wanted to give him the rolls for nothing, but of course he wouldn’t hear of that, and when he said it didn’t matter about the change she wouldn’t hear of that either.

 

“Then there’s nothing for it,” said the prince, “but for me to stay in the village until I have eaten as much as my gold piece will pay for.”

 

As a matter of fact he was really quite glad of an excuse to stay, the baker’s daughter was so very pretty, and he was getting a little tired of travelling.

 

He pottered about in the bakehouse all the afternoon and watched her making the dough for her delicious rolls.

 

He even offered to help her.

 

His blue mantle got rather floury, but he didn’t mind that in the least.

 

The baker’s daughter was rather worried that such a fine gentleman should get in such a mess.

 

She didn’t know he was a prince, otherwise she might have been more worried still.

 

In the evening, when the baker returned, the prince asked if he could put him up for a couple of nights.

 

The baker was a kindly and simple old soul. “Gladly, gladly,” he said, rubbing his hands together and smiling, for the village was a small one and they were very poor, and he was glad to make a little extra money.

 

The prince stayed a whole week at the baker’s house. By that time, what with the bread he had eaten—though he was careful not to eat much and always to choose the cheapest—and the price of his lodging, about half of the gold piece was spent, and the baker’s daughter was able to give him the change from the money she had taken in the shop.

 

So he had no excuse for staying any longer, which grieved him because he had grown very fond of the baker’s daughter and did not like leaving her.

 

But he had an idea that his mother and father would not think her a very suitable bride for him, for princes cannot always marry whom they please, and so he rode sadly away.

 

But the farther he went the sadder he became, and at the end of two months he could bear it no longer, and so one fine morning he turned his horse’s head round and rode back again the way he had come.

 

“She is good and clever and beautiful,” he said. “What more can one want in a wife? When my mother and father see her they will love her as much as I do and will be quite willing that I should marry her.” Which really was very optimistic of him.

 

But alas, when he came to the village and sought the baker’s shop, he was met by strange faces.

 

The baker had died a month since, he was told, and his daughter had left the village and gone out into the world to work for her living, for she could not manage the bakehouse by herself and there was none to help her now that her father was gone.

 

The prince was very, very troubled and unhappy. He tried to find out something more about her, but his efforts were fruitless; no one seemed to know what had become of her.

 

“I will search the world over till I find her,” he said, “even if it take me the whole of my life.”

 

He wandered on and on, always making fresh inquiries, always hoping to hear something of his lost love, but always in vain.

 

And at last he got back to his own kingdom.

 

When his mother and father saw him they were horrified to find how pale and thin he had grown.

 

“Travelling doesn’t seem to suit you, my son,” said his father, looking at him rather seriously and stroking his beard.

 

“The poor boy is tired out,” said his mother. “He’ll look better when he’s had a good rest and some proper food. I don’t suppose he’s ever had a really wholesome meal in those foreign parts.”

 

But the prince remained thin and sad and listless, and at last he told his father and mother the cause of his unhappiness. At first they were a little upset at the idea of his wanting to marry so humble a person as the daughter of a village baker—“But that of course,” thought the prince, “is only because they don’t know her.”

 

And after a time, when they saw how unhappy he was and that all the distractions with which they provided him were unavailing, and that his one idea was to go out into the world again and search for the baker’s daughter, they were so troubled that they felt they would be only too glad if he could have the wish of his heart fulfilled.

 

And then one day as the prince was sitting quietly at breakfast with his parents he jumped up suddenly with an expression of the greatest excitement and joy.

 

“What is it, my son?” said his astonished mother.

 

The prince couldn’t speak for a moment. For one thing he was too excited, and for another his mouth was full of bread, and I told you before how well brought up he was.

 

But he pointed to the dish of breakfast rolls and kept on nodding his head and swallowing as hard as he could.

 

The king and queen thought at first that sorrow had affected his brain, but the prince was able to explain very soon. “The rolls, the rolls,” he said. “Her rolls, hers. No one else could make them so good. She must be here.” And he rushed off to the kitchen without further ado.

 

And there, sure enough, he found the baker’s daughter, peeling potatoes over the sink.

 

By the merest chance she had taken a place as kitchen-maid in the king’s palace, though she hadn’t the faintest idea, when she did so, that the king’s son was the same person as the handsome stranger who had once stayed in her father’s house.

 

And though she had been there a month she had never seen him. How should she? King’s palaces are big places, and the kitchen-maids stay in the kitchen premises, so that she and the prince might never have come face to face at all if it had not happened that, owing to the illness of the royal roll-maker, she had undertaken to make the breakfast rolls that morning.

 

When the king and queen saw how sweet and beautiful she was they made no objection to her as a bride for their son, and so he asked her at once to marry him, which she consented to do, for she loved him as much as he loved her.

 

“I don’t know that I should have chosen a baker’s daughter for our son’s wife,” said the queen to her husband when they talked it over that evening. “But she’s certainly a charming girl, and quite nice people go into business nowadays.”

 

“She’ll make him an excellent wife,” said the king. “Those rolls were delicious.”

 

So they got married quite soon after. The wedding was a rather quiet one because the bride was in mourning for her father, whom she had loved dearly. All the same, it was a very nice affair, and everybody was most jolly and gay. The prince and his wife had a beautiful house not very far from the palace, and I think it is extremely likely that they lived happily ever after.

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THE PRINCE AND THE BAKER’S DAUGHTER – A Free Story

From the eBook “The Rainbow Cat” by Rose Fyleman

ISBN: 9788835349068

URL/DownLoad Link: http://bit.ly/2ScrFPj

==================

TAGS: #Rainbowcat, #adventure, #action, #baker, #banquet, #beautiful, #bottom, #bramble-bush, #castle, #Cat, #Chief, #children, #daughter, #fairies, #fairy, #FairyGiant, #Fairyland, #flowers, #frightened, #gentleman, #giant, #giantess, #gold, #golden, #Golden-bright, #hawthorn, #King, #kingdom, #ladies, #laughter, #magic horse, #magic moon, #mandolin, #Marigold, #marriage, #Mellidora, #palace, #prince, #Princess, #Queen, #Rainbow, #river, #Rondel, #schoolmaster, #silver, #sunshine, #Tree-goblins, #valley, #wicked witch, #wife, #wizard, #rosefyleman

THE LOCKED-OUT FAIRY

A Free Story from Abela Publishing

From “This Way to Christmas” by Ruth Sawyer

 

Two months had passed since David had come to the Hill Country—two months in which he had thrown himself with all the stoutness of heart he could muster into the new life and the things Johanna had promised. He had spent long, crisp November days with Barney in the woods, watching him fell the trees marked for fire-wood and learning to use his end of a cross-cut saw. When the snow came and the lumber roads were packed hard for sledding he had shared in the driving of the team and the piling of the logs. He had learned to skee and to snow-shoe; already he had dulled his skates on the pond above the beaver dam. Yet in spite of all these things, in spite of Barney’s good-natured comradeship and Johanna’s faithful care and love, the ache in his heart had grown deeper until his loneliness seemed to shut him in like the snow-capped hills about him. And now it was seven days before Christmas—and not a word had been said concerning it.

Christmas in the Hill Country

David had begun to wonder if in all that country of bare hilltops and empty valleys, of snow and fir-tree and wild creature, there was anything out of which one could possibly make a Christmas. And slowly the conviction had been borne in upon him that there was not. The very thought of the toy-stores in the city, of the windows with their displays of Christmas knickknacks, of the street booths covered with greens, of what the boys on the block were doing and talking about, of the memories of all the other Christmases that had been, brought unspeakable pangs to his soul. He wondered how he was ever going to stand it—this Christmas that was no Christmas.

And this is how it happened that at dusk-hour, seven days before Christmas, a very low-spirited boy of eight—going-on-nine—sat curled up on the window-seat of the lodge, looking out through the diamond panes and wishing with all his heart that he was somebody else in some other place and that it was some other time of the year.

Barney was always bedding down the horses at this time and Johanna was getting supper; and as there was never anything in particular for David to do it had become a custom with him to watch for the lighting of the lamps in the cabins of the “heathen.” There were four cabins—only one was a cottage; and he could see them all from the lodge by a mere change of position or window. Somehow he liked them, or thought he should like them if he knew them, in spite of all the unalluring things Johanna had said about them. According to her the families who lived in them were outcasts, speaking strange tongues and worshiping strange gods, and quite unfit to cross the door-steps of honest Christian folk. David hardly knew whether Barney shared this opinion or not. Barney teased Johanna a good deal and laughed at her remarks every time she aired her grievance: that there should be no decent neighbors like themselves on all that barren hilltop. In his own heart David clung persistently to the feeling that he should like them all if he ever got near enough to make their acquaintance.

It was always the “lunger’s” lamp that shone out first in the dusk. David could usually tell to the minute when it would be lighted by watching the shadow on the foot-hill. Johanna was uncertain from what country these neighbors had come, but she thought it was Portugal. And Portuguese! Words always failed her when she tried to convey to David the exact place that Portuguese held among the heathen; but he was under the impression that it must be very near the top. One of these neighbors was sick with bad lungs, so his family had come to try the open-air cure of the hills; and they had been here since early spring. David never saw their tiny spark of a light spring out against the dark of the gathering gloom that he did not make a wish that the “lunger” might be a good deal better the next day.

Across the ridge from the foot-hill lay the lumber-camp, and here David always looked for the second light. The camp was temporarily deserted, the company having decided to wait a year or two before cutting down any more timber, and the loggers had been sent to another camp farther north. Only the cook, an old negro, had remained behind to guard the property from fire and poachers, and he it was that lighted in his shack the solitary lamp that sent its twinkling greeting up to David every night.

Straight down the hill shone the third light from the trapper’s cabin, and it was always close to dark before that was lighted. What the trapper’s nationality was Johanna had never happened to specify; but she had often declared that he was one of those bad-looking dark men from the East—Asia, perhaps; and she had not a doubt that he had come to the woods to escape the law. David’s mental picture of him was something quite dreadful; and yet when his light sprang out of the dark and twinkled at him up the white slope he always found himself desperately sorry for the trapper, alone by himself with the creatures he had trapped or shot—and his thoughts.

The fourth light came through another window, shining up from the opposite slope of the hill—the slope that led toward the station and the village beyond. This was the flagman’s light and it hung in the little hut by the junction where the main railroad crossed the circuit line. It was always lighted when David looked for it, and he always sat watching until he should see the colored signal-lights swing out on the track beyond, for then he knew the flagman’s work was over for the day—that is, if all was well on the road. It happened sometimes, however, that there was a snow-slide down the ravine above the crossing, or sometimes a storm uprooted a tree and hurled it across the track, and then the flagman was on guard all night. Now, the flagman was German; and Johanna’s voice always took on a particularly forbidding and contemptuous tone whenever she spoke of him. David had often marveled at this, for in the city his father had friends who were German and they were very good friends. Once David had spoken his mind:

“I don’t see why you call him a heathen, Johanna, just because he was born in the country that’s making the war. It wasn’t his fault—and I don’t see why that’s any reason for treating him as if he had made the trouble himself.”

“Well, how do ye think we’d be treated if we were over there now in that heathen’s country? Sure, ye wouldn’t find them loving us any to speak of.” Johanna’s lips had curled scornfully. “Ye can take my word for it, laddy, if we were there the same as he’s here we would be counting ourselves lucky to be alive at all, and not expecting to be asked in for any tea-drinking parties.”

It troubled David, none the less, this strange unfriendliness of Johanna’s; and this night the weight of it hung particularly heavy upon him. He turned back to his window-nook with a heart made heavier by this condition of alienage. No family, no neighbors, no Christmas—it was a dreary outlook; and he could not picture a single face or a single hearthside behind those four lights that blinked at him in such a friendly fashion.

They posted the sign a dozen yards from the Trappers cabin

He realized suddenly that he was very tired. Half the day he had spent clearing a space on the beaver pond big enough for skating; and clearing off a day’s fall of snow with a shovel and a broom is hard work. He leaned against the window niche and pillowed his head on his arm. He guessed he would go to bed right after supper. Wouldn’t it be fun now, if he could wish himself into one of those cabins, whichever one he chose, and see what was happening there this minute? If he had found the locked-out fairy Johanna had talked so much about he might have learned wishing magic from him. What had happened to the fairy, anyway? Of course it was half a tale and half a joke; nevertheless the locked-out fairy had continued to seem very real to him through these two months of isolation, and wherever he had gone his eye had been always alert for some sign of him. Unbelievable as it may seem, the failure to find him had brought keen disappointment. David had speculated many times as to where he might be living, where he would find his food, how he would keep himself warm. A fairy’s clothes were very light, according to Johanna. Undoubtedly he had come over in just his green jerkin and knee-breeches, with stockings and slippers to match; and these were not fit covering for winter weather like this.

David smiled through half-shut eyes. The fairy might steal a pelt from the trapper’s supply; that would certainly keep him warm; and if he were anything of a tailor he could make himself a cap and a coat in no time. Or, better yet, he might pick out one that just fitted him and creep into it without having to make it over; a mink’s skin would be about the right size, or a squirrel’s. His smile deepened at his own conceit. Then something in the dusk outside caught his eye. Some small creature was hopping across the snow toward the lodge.

David flattened his nose to the window to see better, and made out very distinctly the pointed ears, curved back, and long, bushy tail of a squirrel—a gray squirrel. At once he thought of some nuts in his jacket pocket, nuts left over from an after-dinner cracking. He dug for them successfully, and opening the window a little he dropped them out. Nearer came the squirrel, fearlessly eager, oblivious of the eyes that were watching him with growing interest. He reached the nuts and was nosing them about for the most appetizing when he sat up suddenly on his hind legs, clutching the nut of his choice between his forepaws, and cocking his head as he did so toward the window.

The effect on David was magical. He gave his eyes one insistent rub and then he opened the window wider.

“Come in,” he called, softly. “Please do come in!”

For he had seen under the alert little ears something quite different from the sharp nose and whiskers of the every-day squirrel. There were a pair of blue eyes that winked outrageously at him, while a round, smooth face wrinkled into smiles and a mouth knowingly grinned at him. It was the locked-out fairy at last!

He bobbed his head at David’s invitation, fastened his little white teeth firmly in the nut, and scrambled up the bush that grew just outside. A minute more and he was through the window and down beside David on the seat.

“Ah—ee, laddy, where have your eyes been this fortnight?” he asked. “I’ve whisked about ye and chattered down at ye from half a score o’ pine-trees—and ye never saw me!”

David colored shamefully.

“Never mind. ’Tis a compliment ye’ve been paying to my art,” and the fairy cocked his head and whisked his tail and hopped about in the most convincing fashion.

David held his sides and rocked back and forth with merriment. “It’s perfect,” he laughed; “simply perfect!”

“Aye, ’tis fair; but I’ve not mastered the knack o’ the tail yet. I can swing it grand, but I can’t curl it up stylish. I can fool the mortals easy enough, but ye should see the looks the squirrels give me sometimes when I’m after trying to show off before them.”

There was nothing but admiration in David’s look of response. “The coat fits you splendidly,” he said.

“Sure—’tis as snug as if it grew on me. But I miss my pockets, and I’m not liking the color as well as if it were green.”

David laughed again. “Why, I believe you are as Irish as Johanna.”

“And why shouldn’t I be? Faith, there are worse faults, I’m thinking. Now tell me, laddy, what’s ailing ye? Ye’ve been more than uncommon downhearted lately.”

“How did you know?”

“Could a wee fairy man be watching ye for a fortnight, coming and going, and not know?”

“Well, it’s lonesomeness; lonesomeness and Christmas.” David owned up to it bravely.

“’Tis easy guessing ye’re lonesome—that’s an ailment that’s growing chronic on this hillside. But what’s the matter with Christmas?”

“There isn’t any. There isn’t going to be any Christmas!” And having at last given utterance to his state of mind, David finished with a sorrowful wail.

“And why isn’t there, then? Tell me that.”

“You can’t make Christmas out of miles of snow and acres of fir-trees. What’s a boy going to do when there aren’t any stores or things to buy, or Christmas fixings, or people, and nobody goes about with secrets or surprises?”

The fairy pushed back the top of his head and the gray ears fell off like a fur hood, showing the fairy’s own tow head beneath. He reached for his thinking-lock and pulled it vigorously.

“I should say,” he said at last, “that a boy could do comfortably without them. Sure, weren’t there Christmases long before there were toy-shops? No, no, laddy. Christmas lies in the hearts and memories of good folk, and ye’ll find it wherever ye can find them!”

David shook his head doubtfully.

“I don’t see how that can be; but even suppose it’s true, there aren’t even good folk here.”

The fairy grinned derisively and wagged his furry paw in the direction of the lights shining on the hillside:

“What’s the meaning of that, and that, and that? Now I should be calling them good folk, the same as ye here.”

“Hush!” David looked furtively toward the door that led into the kitchen. “It wouldn’t do to let Johanna hear you. Why, she thinks—”

The fairy raised a silencing paw to his lips.

“Whist, there, laddy! If ye are after wanting to find Christmas ye’d best begin by passing on naught but kind sayings. Maybe ye are not knowing it, but they are the very cairn that mark the way to Christmas. Now I’ll drive a bargain with ye. If ye’ll start out and look for Christmas I’ll agree to help ye find the road to it.”

“Yes,” agreed David, eagerly.

“But there’s one thing ye must promise me. To put out of your mind for all time these notions that ye are bound to find Christmas hanging with the tinsel balls to the Christmas tree or tied to the end of a stocking. Ye must make up your mind to find it with your heart and not with your fingers and your eyes.”

“But,” objected David, “how can you have Christmas without Christmas things?”

“Ye can’t. But ye’ve got the wrong idea entirely about the things. Ye say now that it’s turkey and plum-cake and the presents ye give and the presents ye get; and I say ’tis thinkings and feelings and sayings and rememberings. I’m not meaning, mind ye, that there is anything the matter with the first lot, and there’s many a fine Christmas that has them in, but they’ll never make a Christmas of themselves, not in a thousand years. And what’s more, ye can do grand without them.”

David rubbed his forehead in abject bewilderment. It was all very hard to understand; and as far as he could see the fairy was pointing out a day that sounded like any ordinary day of the year and not at all like Christmas. But, thanks to Johanna, David had an absolute faith in the infallibility of fairies. If he said so it must be true; at least it was worth trying. So he held out his hand and the fairy laid a furry paw over the ball of his forefinger in solemn compact.

“It’s a bargain,” David said.

“It is that,” agreed the fairy. “And there’s nothing now to hinder my going.”

He pulled the gray ears over his tow head again until there was only a small part of fairy left.

“Don’t ye be forgetting,” he reminded David as he slipped through the window. “I’ll be on the watch out for ye the morrow.”

David watched him scramble down the bush, stopping a moment at the bottom to gather up the remainder of the nuts, which he stuffed away miraculously somewhere between his cheek and the fur. Then he raised a furry paw to his ear in a silent salute.

“Good-by,” said David, softly, “good-by. I’m so glad you came.”

And it seemed to him that he heard from over the snow the fairy’s good-by in Gaelic, just as Barney or Johanna might have said it: “Beanacht leat!”

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THE LOCKED OUT FAIRY from the eBook THIS WAY TO CHRISTMAS by RUTH SAWYER.

ISBN: 9788835362913

URL/Download Link: https://bit.ly/2JTVpg4

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TAGS: #ThisWaytoChristmas, #winter, #USA, #Snowedin, #mountaincommunity, #upstateNewYork, #share, #stories, #story, #lockedoutfairy, #home, #immigrants, #togetherness, #adventure, #storytelling, #Barney, #Bethlehem, #born, #Bridget, #bring, #children, #Chris’mus, #Christchild, #Christmas, #Christmasstory, #Claus, #clockmaker, #clock, #creatures, #David, #Dona, #Eve, #fairies, #fairy, #fiddle, #roaringfire, #flagman, #friend, #gather, #gipsies, #gray, #great, #happen, #heart, #Hermann, #hill, #holy, #honey, #Joab, #Johanna, #Josefa, #King, #lad, #lockedout, #lodge, #Manuel, #Mary, #neighbours, #neighbours, #Nicholas, #Peter, #poor, #reindeer, #saint, #Santa, #Santy, #squirrel, #Teig, #Uncle, #window, #world, #ruthsawyer, #Beanachtleat, #childrensstory, #childrensbook, #folklore, #fairytale, #myths, #legends,

A Free Story and a Poem

from PUCK of POOK’s HILL

by RUDYARD KIPLING (illustrated)

PUCK’S SONG and ON THE GREAT WALL

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Puck’s Song

 

See you the dimpled track that runs,

All hollow through the wheat?

O that was where they hauled the guns

That smote King Philip’s fleet.

See you our little mill that clacks,

So busy by the brook?

She has ground her corn and paid her tax

Ever since Domesday Book.

See you our stilly woods of oak,

And the dread ditch beside?

O that was where the Saxons broke,

On the day that Harold died.

See you the windy levels spread

About the gates of Rye?

O that was where the Northmen fled,

When Alfred’s ships came by.

See you our pastures wide and lone,

Where the red oxen browse?

O there was a City thronged and known,

Ere London boasted a house.

And see you, after rain, the trace

Of mound and ditch and wall?

O that was a Legion’s camping-place,

When Cæsar sailed from Gaul.

And see you marks that show and fade,

Like shadows on the Downs?

O they are the lines the Flint Men made,

To guard their wondrous towns.

Trackway and Camp and City lost,

Salt Marsh where now is corn;

Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,

And so was England born!

She is not any common Earth,

Water or wood or air,

But Merlin’s Isle of Gramarye,

Where you and I will fare.

================

On the Great Wall

 

When I left Rome for Lalage’s sake

By the Legions’ Road to Rimini,

She vowed her heart was mine to take

With me and my shield to Rimini—

(Till the Eagles flew from Rimini!)

And I’ve tramped Britain and I’ve tramped Gaul

And the Pontic shore where the snow-flakes fall

As white as the neck of Lalage—

As cold as the heart of Lalage!

And I’ve lost Britain and I’ve lost Gaul

(the voice seemed very cheerful about it),

And I’ve lost Rome, and worst of all,

I’ve lost Lalage!

 

They were standing by the gate to Far Wood when they heard this song. Without a word they hurried to their private gap and wriggled through the hedge almost atop of a jay that was feeding from Puck’s hand.

 

‘Gently!’ said Puck. ‘What are you looking for?’

 

‘Parnesius, of course,’ Dan answered. ‘We’ve only just remembered yesterday. It isn’t fair.’

 

Puck chuckled as he rose. ‘I’m sorry, but children who spend the afternoon with me and a Roman Centurion need a little settling dose of Magic before they go to tea with their governess. Ohé, Parnesius!’ he called.

 

‘Here, Faun!’ came the answer from ‘Volaterrae.’ They could see the shimmer of bronze armour in the beech crotch, and the friendly flash of the great shield uplifted.

 

‘I have driven out the Britons.’ Parnesius laughed like a boy. ‘I occupy their high forts. But Rome is merciful! You may come up.’ And up they three all scrambled.

 

‘What was the song you were singing just now?’ said Una, as soon as she had settled herself.

 

‘That? Oh, Rimini. It’s one of the tunes that are always being born somewhere in the Empire. They run like a pestilence for six months or a year, till another one pleases the Legions, and then they march to that.’

 

‘Tell them about the marching, Parnesius. Few people nowadays walk from end to end of this country,’ said Puck.

 

‘The greater their loss. I know nothing better than the Long March when your feet are hardened. You begin after the mists have risen, and you end, perhaps, an hour after sundown.’

 

‘And what do you have to eat?’ Dan asked, promptly.

 

‘Fat bacon, beans, and bread, and whatever wine happens to be in the rest-houses. But soldiers are born grumblers. Their very first day out, my men complained of our water-ground British corn. They said it wasn’t so filling as the rough stuff that is ground in the Roman ox-mills. However, they had to fetch and eat it.’

 

‘Fetch it? Where from?’ said Una.

 

‘From that newly-invented water-mill below the Forge.’

 

‘That’s Forge Mill—our Mill!’ Una looked at Puck.

 

‘Yes; yours,’ Puck put in. ‘How old did you think it was?’

 

‘I don’t know. Didn’t Sir Richard Dalyngridge talk about it?’

 

‘He did, and it was old in his day,’ Puck answered. ‘Hundreds of years old.’

 

‘It was new in mine,’ said Parnesius. ‘My men looked at the flour in their helmets as though it had been a nest of adders. They did it to try my patience. But I—addressed them, and we became friends.

‘There’s where you meet hunters, and trappers for the Circuses, prodding along chained bears and muzzled wolves.’

 

To tell the truth, they taught me the Roman Step. You see, I’d only served with quick-marching Auxiliaries. A Legion’s pace is altogether different. It is a long, slow stride, that never varies from sunrise to sunset. “Rome’s Race—Rome’s Pace,” as the proverb says. Twenty-four miles in eight hours, neither more nor less. Head and spear up, shield on your back, cuirass-collar open one hand’s breadth—and that’s how you take the Eagles through Britain.’

 

‘And did you meet any adventures?’ said Dan.

 

‘There are no adventures South the Wall,’ said Parnesius. ‘The worst thing that happened me was having to appear before a magistrate up North, where a wandering philosopher had jeered at the Eagles. I was able to show that the old man had deliberately blocked our road, and the magistrate told him, out of his own Book, I believe, that, whatever his God might be, he should pay proper respect to Cæsar.’

 

‘What did you do?’ said Dan.

 

‘Went on. Why should I care for such things, my business being to reach my station? It took me twenty days.

 

‘Of course, the farther North you go the emptier are the roads. At last you fetch clear of the forests and climb bare hills, where wolves howl in the ruins of our cities that have been. No more pretty girls; no more jolly magistrates who knew your Father when he was young, and invite you to stay with them; no news at the temples and way-stations except bad news of wild beasts. There’s where you meet hunters, and trappers for the Circuses, prodding along chained bears and muzzled wolves. Your pony shies at them, and your men laugh.

 

‘The houses change from gardened villas to shut forts with watch-towers of grey stone, and great stone-walled sheepfolds, guarded by armed Britons of the North Shore. In the naked hills beyond the naked houses, where the shadows of the clouds play like cavalry charging, you see puffs of black smoke from the mines. The hard road goes on and on—and the wind sings through your helmet-plume—past altars to Legions and Generals forgotten, and broken statues of Gods and Heroes, and thousands of graves where the mountain foxes and hares peep at you. Red-hot in summer, freezing in winter, is that big, purple heather country of broken stone.

 

‘Just when you think you are at the world’s end, you see a smoke from East to West as far as the eye can turn, and then, under it, also as far as the eye can stretch, houses and temples, shops and theatres, barracks, and granaries, trickling along like dice behind—always behind—one long, low, rising and falling, and hiding and showing line of towers. And that is the Wall!’

 

And that is the Wall!

 

‘Ah!’ said the children, taking breath.

 

‘You may well,’ said Parnesius. ‘Old men who have followed the Eagles since boyhood say nothing in the Empire is more wonderful than first sight of the Wall!’

 

‘Is it just a Wall? Like the one round the kitchen-garden?’ said Dan.

 

‘No, no! It is the Wall. Along the top are towers with guard-houses, small towers, between. Even on the narrowest part of it three men with shields can walk abreast from guard-house to guard-house. A little curtain wall, no higher than a man’s neck, runs along the top of the thick wall, so that from a distance you see the helmets of the sentries sliding back and forth like beads. Thirty feet high is the Wall, and on the Picts’ side, the North, is a ditch, strewn with blades of old swords and spear-heads set in wood, and tyres of wheels joined by chains. The Little People come there to steal iron for their arrow-heads.

 

‘But the Wall itself is not more wonderful than the town behind it. Long ago there were great ramparts and ditches on the South side, and no one was allowed to build there. Now the ramparts are partly pulled down and built over, from end to end of the Wall; making a thin town eighty miles long. Think of it! One roaring, rioting, cockfighting, wolf-baiting, horse-racing town, from Ituna on the West to Segedunum on the cold eastern beach! On one side heather, woods and ruins where Picts hide, and on the other, a vast town—long like a snake, and wicked like a snake. Yes, a snake basking beside a warm wall!

 

‘My Cohort, I was told, lay at Hunno, where the Great North Road runs through the Wall into the Province of Valentia.’ Parnesius laughed scornfully. ‘The Province of Valentia! We followed the road, therefore, into Hunno town, and stood astonished. The place was a fair—a fair of peoples from every corner of the Empire. Some were racing horses: some sat in wine-shops: some watched dogs baiting bears, and many gathered in a ditch to see cocks fight. A boy not much older than myself, but I could see he was an Officer, reined up before me and asked what I wanted.

 

‘“My station,” I said, and showed him my shield.’ Parnesius held up his broad shield with its three X’s like letters on a beer-cask.

 

‘“Lucky omen!” said he. “Your Cohort’s the next tower to us, but they’re all at the cock-fight. This is a happy place. Come and wet the Eagles.” He meant to offer me a drink.

 

‘“When I’ve handed over my men,” I said. I felt angry and ashamed.

 

‘“Oh, you’ll soon outgrow that sort of nonsense,” he answered. “But don’t let me interfere with your hopes. Go on to the Statue of Roma Dea. You can’t miss it. The main road into Valentia!” and he laughed and rode off. I could see the Statue not a quarter of a mile away, and there I went. At some time or other the Great North Road ran under it into Valentia; but the far end had been blocked up because of the Picts, and on the plaster a man had scratched, “Finish!” It was like marching into a cave. We grounded spears together, my little thirty, and it echoed in the barrel of the arch, but none came. There was a door at one side painted with our number. We prowled in, and I found a cook asleep, and ordered him to give us food. Then I climbed to the top of the Wall, and looked out over the Pict country, and I—thought,’ said Parnesius. ‘The bricked-up arch with “Finish!” on the plaster was what shook me, for I was not much more than a boy.’

 

‘What a shame!’ said Una. ‘But did you feel happy after you’d had a good——’ Dan stopped her with a nudge.

 

‘Happy?’ said Parnesius. ‘When the men of the Cohort I was to command came back unhelmeted from the cock-fight, their birds under their arms, and asked me who I was? No, I was not happy; but I made my new Cohort unhappy too…. I wrote my Mother I was happy, but, oh, my friends’—he stretched arms over bare knees—‘I would not wish my worst enemy to suffer as I suffered through my first months on the Wall. Remember this: among the officers was scarcely one, except myself (and I thought I had lost the favour of Maximus, my General), scarcely one who had not done something of wrong or folly. Either he had killed a man, or taken money, or insulted the magistrates, or blasphemed the Gods, and so had been sent to the Wall as a hiding-place from shame or fear. And the men were as the officers. Remember, also, that the Wall was manned by every breed and race in the Empire. No two towers spoke the same tongue, or worshipped the same Gods. In one thing only we were all equal. No matter what arms we had used before we came to the Wall, on the Wall we were all archers, like the Scythians. The Pict cannot run away from the arrow, or crawl under it. He is a bowman himself. He knows!’

 

‘I suppose you were fighting Picts all the time,’ said Dan.

 

‘Picts seldom fight. I never saw a fighting Pict for half a year. The tame Picts told us they had all gone North.’

 

‘What is a tame Pict?’ said Dan.

 

‘A Pict—there were many such—who speaks a few words of our tongue, and slips across the Wall to sell ponies and wolf-hounds. Without a horse and a dog, and a friend, man would perish. The Gods gave me all three, and there is no gift like friendship. Remember this’—Parnesius turned to Dan—‘when you become a young man. For your fate will turn on the first true friend you make.’

 

‘He means,’ said Puck, grinning, ‘that if you try to make yourself a decent chap when you’re young, you’ll make rather decent friends when you grow up. If you’re a beast, you’ll have beastly friends. Listen to the Pious Parnesius on Friendship!’

 

‘I am not pious,’ Parnesius answered, ‘but I know what goodness means; and my friend, though he was without hope, was ten thousand times better than I. Stop laughing, Faun!’

 

‘Oh Youth Eternal and All-believing,’ cried Puck, as he rocked on the branch above. ‘Tell them about your Pertinax.’

 

‘He was that friend the Gods sent me—the boy who spoke to me when I first came. Little older than myself, commanding the Augusta Victoria Cohort on the tower next to us and the Numidians. In virtue he was far my superior.’

 

‘Then why was he on the Wall?’ Una asked, quickly. ‘They’d all done something bad. You said so yourself.’

 

‘He was the nephew, his Father had died, of a great rich man in Gaul who was not always kind to his Mother. When Pertinax grew up, he discovered this, and so his uncle shipped him off, by trickery and force, to the Wall. We came to know each other at a ceremony in our Temple—in the dark. It was the Bull Killing,’ Parnesius explained to Puck.

 

‘I see,’ said Puck, and turned to the children. ‘That’s something you wouldn’t quite understand. Parnesius means he met Pertinax in church.’

 

‘Yes—in the Cave we first met, and we were both raised to the Degree of Gryphons together.’ Parnesius lifted his hand towards his neck for an instant. ‘He had been on the Wall two years, and knew the Picts well. He taught me first how to take Heather.’

 

‘What’s that?’ said Dan.

 

‘Going out hunting in the Pict country with a tame Pict. You are quite safe so long as you are his guest, and wear a sprig of heather where it can be seen. If you went alone you would surely be killed, if you were not smothered first in the bogs. Only the Picts know their way about those black and hidden bogs. Old Allo, the one-eyed, withered little Pict from whom we bought our ponies, was our special friend. At first we went only to escape from the terrible town, and to talk together about our homes. Then he showed us how to hunt wolves and those great red deer with horns like Jewish candlesticks. The Roman-born officers rather looked down on us for doing this, but we preferred the heather to their amusements. Believe me,’ Parnesius turned again to Dan, ‘a boy is safe from all things that really harm when he is astride a pony or after a deer. Do you remember, O Faun,’ he turned to Puck, ‘the little altar I built to the Sylvan Pan by the pine-forest beyond the brook?’

 

‘Which? The stone one with the line from Xenophon?’ said Puck, in quite a new voice.

 

‘No. What do I know of Xenophon? That was Pertinax—after he had shot his first mountain-hare with an arrow—by chance! Mine I made of round pebbles in memory of my first bear. It took me one happy day to build.’ Parnesius faced the children quickly.

 

‘And that was how we lived on the Wall for two years—a little scuffling with the Picts, and a great deal of hunting with old Allo in the Pict country. He called us his children sometimes, and we were fond of him and his barbarians, though we never let them paint us Pict fashion. The marks endure till you die.’

 

‘How’s it done?’ said Dan. ‘Anything like tattooing?’

 

‘They prick the skin till the blood runs, and rub in coloured juices. Allo was painted blue, green, and red from his forehead to his ankles. He said it was part of his religion. He told us about his religion (Pertinax was always interested in such things), and as we came to know him well, he told us what was happening in Britain behind the Wall. Many things took place behind us in those days. And, by the Light of the Sun,’ said Parnesius, earnestly, ‘there was not much that those little people did not know! He told me when Maximus crossed over to Gaul, after he had made himself Emperor of Britain, and what troops and emigrants he had taken with him. We did not get the news on the Wall till fifteen days later. He told me what troops Maximus was taking out of Britain every month to help him to conquer Gaul; and I always found the numbers as he said. Wonderful! And I tell another strange thing!’

 

He jointed his hands across his knees, and leaned his head on the curve of the shield behind him.

 

‘Late in the summer, when the first frosts begin and the Picts kill their bees, we three rode out after wolf with some new hounds. Rutilianus, our General, had given us ten days’ leave, and we had pushed beyond the Second Wall—beyond the Province of Valentia—into the higher hills, where there are not even any of Rome’s old ruins. We killed a she-wolf before noon, and while Allo was skinning her he looked up and said to me, “When you are Captain of the Wall, my child, you won’t be able to do this anymore!”

 

‘I might as well have been made Prefect of Lower Gaul, so I laughed and said, “Wait till I am Captain.” “No, don’t wait,” said Allo. “Take my advice and go home—both of you.” “We have no homes,” said Pertinax. “You know that as well as we do. We’re finished men—thumbs down against both of us. Only men without hope would risk their necks on your ponies.” The old man laughed one of those short Pict laughs—like a fox barking on a frosty night. “I’m fond of you two,” he said. “Besides, I’ve taught you what little you know about hunting. Take my advice and go home.”

 

‘“We can’t,” I said. “I’m out of favour with my General, for one thing; and for another, Pertinax has an uncle.”

 

‘“I don’t know about his uncle,” said Allo, “but the trouble with you, Parnesius, is that your General thinks well of you.”

 

‘“Roma Dea!” said Pertinax, sitting up. “What can you guess what Maximus thinks, you old horse-coper?”

 

‘Just then (you know how near the brutes creep when one is eating?) a great dog-wolf jumped out behind us, and away our rested hounds tore after him, with us at their tails. He ran us far out of any country we’d ever heard of, straight as an arrow till sunset, towards the sunset. We came at last to long capes stretching into winding waters, and on a grey beach below us we saw ships drawn up. Forty-seven we counted—not Roman galleys but the raven-winged ships from the North where Rome does not rule. Men moved in the ships, and the sun flashed on their helmets—winged helmets of the red-haired men from the North where Rome does not rule. We watched, and we counted, and we wondered; for though we had heard rumours concerning these Winged Hats, as the Picts called them, never before had we looked upon them.

 

‘“Come away! Come away!” said Allo. “My Heather won’t protect you here. We shall all be killed!” His legs trembled like his voice. Back we went—back across the heather under the moon, till it was nearly morning, and our poor beasts stumbled on some ruins.

 

‘When we woke, very stiff and cold, Allo was mixing the meal and water. One does not light fires in the Pict country except near a village. The little men are always signalling to each other with smokes, and a strange smoke brings them out buzzing like bees. They can sting, too!

 

‘“What we saw last night was a trading-station,” said Allo. “Nothing but a trading-station.”

 

‘“I do not like lies on an empty stomach,” said Pertinax. “I suppose” (he had eyes like an eagle’s), “I suppose that is a trading-station also?” He pointed to a smoke far off on a hill-top, ascending in what we call the Pict’s Call:—Puff—double-puff: double-puff—puff! They make it by raising and dropping a wet hide on a fire.

 

‘“No,” said Allo, pushing the platter back into the bag. “That is for you and me. Your fate is fixed. Come.”

 

‘We came. When one takes Heather, one must obey one’s Pict—but that wretched smoke was twenty miles distant, well over on the east coast, and the day was as hot as a bath.

 

‘“Whatever happens,” said Allo, while our ponies grunted along, “I want you to remember me.”

 

‘“I shall not forget,” said Pertinax. “You have cheated me out of my breakfast.”

 

‘“What is a handful of crushed oats to a Roman?” he said. Then he laughed his laugh that was not a laugh. “What would you do if you were a handful of oats being crushed between the upper and lower stones of a mill?”

 

‘“I’m Pertinax, not a riddle-guesser,” said Pertinax.

 

‘“You’re a fool,” said Allo. “Your Gods and my Gods are threatened by strange Gods, and all you can do is to laugh.”

 

‘“Threatened men live long,” I said.

 

‘“I pray the Gods that may be true,” he said. “But I ask you again not to forget me.”

 

‘We climbed the last hot hill and looked out on the eastern sea, three or four miles off. There was a small sailing-galley of the North Gaul pattern at anchor, her landing-plank down and her sail half up; and below us, alone in a hollow, holding his pony, sat Maximus, Emperor of Britain! He was dressed like a hunter, and he leaned on his little stick; but I knew that back as far as I could see it, and I told Pertinax.

 

‘“You’re madder than Allo!” he said. “It must be the sun!”

 

‘Maximus never stirred till we stood before him. Then he looked me up and down, and said: “Hungry again? It seems to be my destiny to feed you whenever we meet. I have food here. Allo shall cook it.”

 

‘“No,” said Allo. “A Prince in his own land does not wait on wandering Emperors. I feed my two children without asking your leave.” He began to blow up the ashes.

 

‘“I was wrong,” said Pertinax. “We are all mad. Speak up, O Madman called Emperor!”

 

‘Maximus smiled his terrible tight-lipped smile, but two years on the Wall do not make a man afraid of mere looks. So I was not afraid.

 

‘“I meant you, Parnesius, to live and die an Officer of the Wall,” said Maximus. “But it seems from these,” he fumbled in his breast, “you can think as well as draw.” He pulled out a roll of letters I had written to my people, full of drawings of Picts, and bears, and men I had met on the Wall. Mother and my sister always liked my pictures.

 

‘He handed me one that I had called “Maximus’s Soldiers.” It showed a row of fat wine-skins, and our old Doctor of the Hunno hospital snuffing at them. Each time that Maximus had taken troops out of Britain to help him to conquer Gaul, he used to send the garrisons more wine—to keep them quiet, I suppose. On the Wall, we always called a wine-skin a “Maximus.” Oh, yes; and I had drawn them in Imperial helmets!

 

‘“Not long since,” he went on, “men’s names were sent up to Cæsar for smaller jokes than this.”

 

‘“True, Cæsar,” said Pertinax; “but you forget that was before I, your friend’s friend, became such a good spear-thrower.”

 

‘He did not actually point his hunting spear at Maximus, but balanced it on his palm—so!

 

‘“I was speaking of time past,” said Maximus, never fluttering an eyelid. “Nowadays one is only too pleased to find boys who can think for themselves, and their friends.” He nodded at Pertinax. “Your Father lent me the letters, Parnesius, so you run no risk from me.”

 

‘“None whatever,” said Pertinax, and rubbed the spear-point on his sleeve.

 

‘“I have been forced to reduce the garrisons in Britain, because I need troops in Gaul. Now I come to take troops from the Wall itself,” said he.

 

‘“I wish you joy of us,” said Pertinax. “We’re the last sweepings of the Empire—the men without hope. Myself, I’d sooner trust condemned criminals.”

 

‘“You think so?” he said, quite seriously. “But it will only be till I win Gaul. One must always risk one’s life, or one’s soul, or one’s peace—or some little thing.”

 

‘Allo passed round the fire with the sizzling deer’s meat. He served us two first.

 

‘“Ah!” said Maximus, waiting his turn. “I perceive you are in your own country. Well, you deserve it. They tell me you have quite a following among the Picts, Parnesius.”

 

‘“I have hunted with them,” I said. “Maybe I have a few friends among the Heather.”

 

‘“He is the only armoured man of you all who understands us,” said Allo, and he began a long speech about our virtues, and how we had saved one of his grandchildren from a wolf the year before.’

 

‘Had you?’ said Una.

 

‘Yes; but that was neither here nor there. The little green man orated like a—like Cicero. He made us out to be magnificent fellows. Maximus never took his eyes off our faces.

 

‘“Enough,” he said. “I have heard Allo on you. I wish to hear you on the Picts.”

 

‘I told him as much as I knew, and Pertinax helped me out. There is never harm in a Pict if you but take the trouble to find out what he wants. Their real grievance against us came from our burning their heather. The whole garrison of the Wall moved out twice a year, and solemnly burned the heather for ten miles North. Rutilianus, our General, called it clearing the country. The Picts, of course, scampered away, and all we did was to destroy their bee-bloom in the summer, and ruin their sheep-food in the spring.

 

‘“True, quite true,” said Allo. “How can we make our holy heather-wine, if you burn our bee-pasture?”

 

‘We talked long, Maximus asking keen questions that showed he knew much and had thought more about the Picts. He said presently to me: “If I gave you the old Province of Valentia to govern, could you keep the Picts contented till I won Gaul? Stand away, so that you do not see Allo’s face; and speak your own thoughts.”

 

‘“No,” I said. “You cannot re-make that Province. The Picts have been free too long.”

 

‘“Leave them their village councils, and let them furnish their own soldiers,” he said. “You, I am sure, would hold the reins very lightly.”

 

‘“Even then, no,” I said. “At least not now. They have been too oppressed by us to trust anything with a Roman name for years and years.”

 

‘I heard old Allo behind me mutter: “Good child!”

 

‘“Then what do you recommend,” said Maximus, “to keep the North quiet till I win Gaul?”

 

‘“Leave the Picts alone,” I said. “Stop the heather-burning at once, and—they are improvident little animals—send them a shipload or two of corn now and then.”

 

‘“Their own men must distribute it—not some cheating Greek accountant,” said Pertinax.

 

‘“Yes, and allow them to come to our hospitals when they are sick,” I said.

 

‘“Surely they would die first,” said Maximus.

 

‘“Not if Parnesius brought them in,” said Allo. “I could show you twenty wolf-bitten, bear-clawed Picts within twenty miles of here. But Parnesius must stay with them in Hospital, else they would go mad with fear.”

 

‘“I see,” said Maximus. “Like everything else in the world, it is one man’s work. You, I think, are that one man.”

 

‘“Pertinax and I are one,” I said.

 

‘“As you please, so long as you work. Now, Allo, you know that I mean your people no harm. Leave us to talk together,” said Maximus.

 

‘“No need!” said Allo. “I am the corn between the upper and lower millstones. I must know what the lower millstone means to do. These boys have spoken the truth as far as they know it. I, a Prince, will tell you the rest. I am troubled about the Men of the North.” He squatted like a hare in the heather, and looked over his shoulder.

 

‘“I also,” said Maximus, “or I should not be here.”

 

‘“Listen,” said Allo. “Long and long ago the Winged Hats”—he meant the Northmen—“came to our beaches and said, ‘Rome falls! Push her down!’ We fought you. You sent men. We were beaten. After that we said to the Winged Hats, ‘You are liars! Make our men alive that Rome killed, and we will believe you.’ They went away ashamed. Now they come back bold, and they tell the old tale, which we begin to believe—that Rome falls!”

 

‘“Give me three years’ peace on the Wall,” cried Maximus, “and I will show you and all the ravens how they lie!”

 

‘“Ah, I wish it too! I wish to save what is left of the corn from the millstones. But you shoot us Picts when we come to borrow a little iron from the Iron Ditch; you burn our heather, which is all our crop; you trouble us with your great catapults. Then you hide behind the Wall, and scorch us with Greek fire. How can I keep my young men from listening to the Winged Hats—in winter especially, when we are hungry? My young men will say, ‘Rome can neither fight nor rule. She is taking her men out of Britain. The Winged Hats will help us to push down the Wall. Let us show them the secret roads across the bogs.’ Do I want that? No!” He spat like an adder. “I would keep the secrets of my people though I were burned alive. My two children here have spoken truth. Leave us Picts alone. Comfort us, and cherish us, and feed us from far off—with the hand behind your back. Parnesius understands us. Let him have rule on the Wall, and I will hold my young men quiet for”—he ticked it off on his fingers—“one year easily: the next year not so easily: the third year, perhaps! See, I give you three years. If then you do not show us that Rome is strong in men and terrible in arms, the Winged Hats, I tell you, will sweep down the Wall from either sea till they meet in the middle, and you will go. I shall not grieve over that, but well I know tribe never helps tribe except for one price. We Picts will go too. The Winged Hats will grind us to this!” He tossed a handful of dust in the air.

 

‘“Oh, Roma Dea!” said Maximus, half aloud. “It is always one man’s work—always and everywhere!”

 

‘“And one man’s life,” said Allo. “You are Emperor, but not a God. You may die.”

 

‘“I have thought of that, too,” said he. “Very good. If this wind holds, I shall be at the East end of the Wall by morning. To-morrow, then, I shall see you two when I inspect; and I will make you Captains of the Wall for this work.”

 

‘“One instant, Cæsar,” said Pertinax. “All men have their price. I am not bought yet.”

 

‘“Do you also begin to bargain so early?” said Maximus. “Well?”

 

‘“Give me justice against my uncle Icenus, the Duumvir of Divio in Gaul,” he said.

 

‘“Only a life? I thought it would be money or an office. Certainly you shall have him. Write his name on these tablets—on the red side; the other is for the living!” And Maximus held out his tablets.

 

‘“He is of no use to me dead,” said Pertinax. “My mother is a widow. I am far off. I am not sure he pays her all her dowry.”

 

‘“No matter. My arm is reasonably long. We will look through your uncle’s accounts in due time. Now, farewell till to-morrow, O Captains of the Wall!”

 

‘We saw him grow small across the heather as he walked to the galley. There were Picts, scores, each side of him, hidden behind stones. He never looked left or right. He sailed away Southerly, full spread before the evening breeze, and when we had watched him out to sea, we were silent. We understood Earth bred few men like to this man.

 

‘Presently Allo brought the ponies and held them for us to mount—a thing he had never done before.

 

‘“Wait awhile,” said Pertinax, and he made a little altar of cut turf, and strewed heather-bloom atop, and laid upon it a letter from a girl in Gaul.

 

‘“What do you do, O my friend?” I said.

 

‘“I sacrifice to my dead youth,” he answered, and, when the flames had consumed the letter, he ground them out with his heel. Then we rode back to that Wall of which we were to be Captains.’

 

Parnesius stopped. The children sat still, not even asking if that were all the tale. Puck beckoned, and pointed the way out of the wood. ‘Sorry,’ he whispered, ‘but you must go now.’

 

‘We haven’t made him angry, have we?’ said Una. ‘He looks so far off, and—and—thinky.’

 

‘Bless your heart, no. Wait till to-morrow. It won’t be long. Remember, you’ve been playing “Lays of Ancient Rome.”’

 

And as soon as they had scrambled through their gap, where Oak, Ash and Thorn grow, that was all they remembered.

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From: PUCK OF POOK’s HILL by RUDYARD KIPLING (illustrated)

ISBN: 9788835367420

To download this book CLICK HERE>> http://bit.ly/2vUVAnO

 

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A MIDNIGHT VISIT From The Little Green Goblin

From The Little Green Goblin by James Ball Naylor.

 

Little Bob Taylor was mad, discouraged, and thoroughly miserable. Things had gone wrong—as things have the perverse habit of doing with mischievous, fun-loving boys of ten—and he was disgruntled, disgusted. The school year drawing to a close had been one of dreary drudgery; at least that was the retrospective view he took of it. And warm, sunshiny weather had come—the season for outdoor sports and vagrant rambles—and the end was not yet. Still he was a galley slave in the gilded barge of modern education; and open and desperate rebellion was in his heart.

One lesson was not disposed of before another intrusively presented itself, and tasks at home multiplied with a fecundity rivaling that of the evils of Pandora’s box. Yes, Bob was all out of sorts. School was a bore; tasks at home were a botheration, and life was a frank failure. He knew it; and what he knew he knew.

He had come from school on this particular day in an irritable, surly mood, to find that the lawn needed mowing, that the flower-beds needed weeding,—and just when he desired to steal away upon the wooded hillside back of the house and make buckeye whistles! He had demurred, grumbled and growled, and his father had rebuked him. Then he had complained of a headache, and his mother had given him a pill—a pill! think of it—and sent him off to bed.

Bob was out of sorts with himself

So here he was, tossing upon his own little bed in his own little room at the back of the house. It was twilight. The window was open, and the sweet fragrance of the honeysuckle flowers floated in to him. Birds were chirping and twittering as they settled themselves to rest among the sheltering boughs of the wild cherry tree just without, and the sounds of laughter and song came from the rooms beneath, where the other members of the family were making merry. Bob was hurt, grieved. Was there such a thing as justice in the whole world? He doubted it! And he wriggled and squirmed from one side of the bed to the other, kicked the footboard and dug his fists into the pillows—burning with anger and consuming with self-pity. At last the gathering storm of his contending emotions culminated in a downpour of tears, and weeping, he fell asleep.

“Hello! Hello, Bob! Hello, Bob Taylor!”

Bob popped up in bed, threw off the light coverings and stared about him. A broad band of moonlight streamed in at the open window, making the room almost as light as day. Not a sound was to be heard. The youngster peered into the shadowy corners and out into the black hallway, straining his ears. The clock down stairs struck ten deliberate, measured strokes.

“I thought I heard somebody calling me,” the lad muttered; “I must have been dreaming.”

He dropped back upon his pillows and closed his eyes.

“Hello, Bob!”

The boy again sprang to a sitting posture, as quick as a jack-in-a-box, his eyes and mouth wide open. He was startled, a little frightened.

“Hel—hello yourself!” he quavered.

“I’m helloing you,” the voice replied. “I’ve no need to hello myself; I’m awake.”

Bob looked all around, but could not locate the speaker.

“I’m awake, too,” he muttered; “at least I guess I am.”

“Yes, you’re awake all right enough now,” the voice said; “but I nearly yelled a lung loose getting you awake.”

“Well, where are you?” the boy cried.

A hoarse, rasping chuckle was the answer, apparently coming from the open window. Bob turned his eyes in that direction and blinked and stared, and blinked again; for there upon the sill, distinctly visible in the streaming white moonlight, stood the oddest, most grotesque figure the boy had ever beheld. Was it a dwarfed and deformed bit of humanity, or a gigantic frog masquerading in the garb of a man? Bob could not tell; so he ventured the very natural query:

“What are you?”

“I’m a goblin,” his nocturnal visitor made reply, in a harsh strident, parrot-like voice.

“A goblin?” Bob questioned.

“Yes.”

“Well, what’s a goblin?”

“Don’t you know?” in evident surprise.

“No.”

“Why, boy—boy! Your education has been sadly amiss.”

“I know it,” Bob replied with unction, his school grievances returning in full force to his mind. “But what is a goblin? Anything like a gobbler?”

“Stuff!” his visitor exclaimed in a tone of deep disgust. “Anything like a gobbler! Bob, you ought to be ashamed. Do I look anything like a turkey?”

“No, you look like a frog,” the boy laughed.

“Shut up!” the goblin croaked.

“I won’t!” snapped the boy.

“Look here!” cried the goblin. “Surely you know what goblins are. You’ve read of ’em—you’ve seen their pictures in books, haven’t you?”

“I think I have,” Bob said reflectively, “but I don’t know just what they are.”

“You know what a man is, don’t you?” the goblin queried.

“Of course.”

“Well, what is a man?”

“Huh?” the lad cried sharply.

“What is a man?”

“Why, a man’s a—a—a man,” Bob answered, lamely.

“Good—very good;” the goblin chuckled, interlocking his slim fingers over his protuberant abdomen and rocking himself to and fro upon his slender legs. “I see your schooling’s done you some good. Yes, a man’s a man, and a goblin’s a goblin. Understand? It’s all as clear as muddy water, when you think it over. Hey?”

“You explain things just like my teacher does,” the boy muttered peevishly.

“How’s that?” the goblin inquired, seating himself upon the sill and drawing his knees up to his chin.

“Why, when we ask him a question, he asks us one in return; and when we answer it, he tangles us all up and leaves us that way.”

“Does he?” the goblin grinned.

“Yes, he does,” sullenly.

“He must be a good teacher.”

“He is good—good for nothing,” snappishly.

The goblin hugged his slim shanks and laughed silently. He was a diminutive fellow, not more than a foot in height. His head was large; his body was pursy. A pair of big, waggling ears, a broad, flat nose, two small, pop eyes and a wide mouth made up his features. His dress consisted of a brimless, peaked cap, cutaway coat, long waistcoat, tight fitting trousers and a pair of tiny shoes—all of a vivid green color. His was indeed an uncouth and queer figure!

“Say!” Bob cried, suddenly.

“Huh?” the goblin ejaculated, throwing back his head and nimbly scratching his chin with the toe of his shoe.

“What are you called?”

“Sometimes I’m called the Little Green Goblin of Goblinville.”

“Oh!”

“Yes.”

“But what’s your name?”

“Fitz.”

“Fitz?”

“Yes.”

“Fitz what?”

“Fitz Mee.”

“Fits you?” laughed Bob. “I guess it does.”

“No!” rasped the goblin. “Not Fitz Hugh; Fitz Mee.”

“That’s what I said,” giggled the boy, “fits you.”

“I know you did; but I didn’t. I said Fitz Mee.”

“I can’t see the difference,” said Bob, with a puzzled shake of the head.

“Oh, you can’t!” sneered the goblin.

“No, I can’t!”—bristling pugnaciously.

“Huh!”—contemptuously—“I say my name is Fitz Mee; you say it is Fitz Hugh; and you can’t see the difference, hey?”

“Oh, that’s what you mean—that your name is Fitz Mee,” grinned Bob.

“Of course it’s what I mean,” the goblin muttered gratingly; “it’s what I said; and a goblin always says what he means and means what he says.”

“Where’s your home?” the boy ventured to inquire.

“In Goblinville,” was the crisp reply.

“Goblinville?”

“Yes; the capital of Goblinland.”

“And where’s that?”

“A long distance east or a long distance west.”

“Well, which?”

“Either or both.”

“Oh, that can’t be!” Bob cried.

“It can’t?”

“Why, no.”

“Why can’t it?”

“The place can’t be east and west both—from here.”

“But it can, and it is,” the goblin insisted.

“Is that so?”—in profound wonder.

“Yes; it’s on the opposite side of the globe.”

“Oh, I see.”

The goblin nodded, batting his pop eyes.

“Well, what are you doing here?” Bob pursued.

“Talking to you,” grinned the goblin.

“I know that,” the lad grumbled irritably. “But what brought you here?”

“A balloon.”

“Oh, pshaw! What did you come here for?”

“For you.”

“For me?”

“Yes; you don’t like to live in this country, and I’ve come to take you to a better one.”

“To Goblinland?”

“Yes.”

“Is that a better country than this—for boys?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“In what way is it better?” Bob demanded, shrewdly. “Tell me about it.”

“Well,” the goblin went on to explain, unclasping his hands and stretching his slender legs full length upon the window-sill, “in your country a boy isn’t permitted to do what pleases him, but is compelled to do what pleases others. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes, it is,” the lad muttered.

“But in our land,” the goblin continued, “a boy isn’t permitted to do what pleases others, but is compelled to do what pleases himself.”

“Oh!” ejaculated Bob, surprised and pleased. “That’s great. I’d like to live in Goblinland.”

“Of course you would,” said the goblin, placing a finger alongside of his flat nose and winking a pop eye. “Your parents and your teacher don’t know how to treat you—don’t appreciate you; they don’t understand boys. You’d better come along with me.”

“I’ve a notion to,” Bob replied thoughtfully. Then, abruptly: “But how did you find out about me, that I was dissatisfied with things here?”

“Oh, we know everything that’s going on,” the goblin grinned; “we get wireless telephone messages from all over the world. Whenever anybody says anything—or thinks anything, even—we learn of it; and if they’re in trouble some one of us good little goblins sets off to help them.”

“Why, how good of you!” Bob murmured, in sincere admiration. “You chaps are a bully lot!”

“Yes, indeed,” the goblin giggled; “we’re a good-hearted lot—we are. Oh, you’ll just love and worship us when you learn all about us!”

And the little green sprite almost choked with some suppressed emotion.

“I’m going with you,” the boy said, with sudden decision. “Will your balloon carry two, though?”

“We can manage that,” said the goblin. “Come here to the window and take a squint at my aërial vehicle.”

Bob crawled to the foot of the bed and peeped out the window. There hung the goblin’s balloon, anchored to the window-sill by means of a rope and hook. The bag looked like a big fat feather bed and the car resembled a large Willow clothes-basket. The boy was surprised, and not a little disappointed.

“And you came here in that thing?” he asked, unable to conceal the contempt he felt for the primitive and clumsy-looking contraption.

“Of course I did,” Fitz Mee made answer.

“And how did you get from the basket to the window here?”

“Slid down the anchor-rope.”

“Oh!” Bob gave an understanding nod. “And you’re going to climb the rope, when you go?”

“Yes; can you climb it?”

“Why, I—I could climb it,” Bob replied, slowly shaking his head; “but I’m not going to.”

“You’re not?” cried the goblin.

“No.”

“Why?”

“I’m not going to risk my life in any such a balloon as that. It looks like an old feather bed.”

“It is a feather bed,” Fitz answered, complacently.

“WHAT!” exclaimed Fitz Mee

“What!”

The goblin nodded sagely.

“Whee!” the lad whistled. “You don’t mean what you say, do you? You mean it’s a bed tick filled with gas, don’t you?”

“I mean just what I say,” Fitz Mee replied, positively. “That balloon bag is a feather bed.”

“But a feather bed won’t float in the air,” Bob objected.

“Won’t it?” leered the goblin.

“No.”

“How do you know? Did you ever try one to see?”

“N—o.”

“Well, one feather, a downy feather, will fly in the air, and carry its own weight and a little more, won’t it?”

“Yes,” the lad admitted, wondering what the goblin was driving at.

“Then won’t thousands of feathers confined in a bag fly higher and lift more than one feather alone will?”

“No,” positively.

“Tut—tut!” snapped the goblin. “You don’t know anything of the law of physics, it appears. Won’t a thousand volumes of gas confined in a bag fly higher and lift more than one volume unconfined will?”

“Why, of course,” irritably.

“Well!”—triumphantly,—“don’t the same law apply to feathers? Say!”

“I—I don’t know,” Bob stammered, puzzled but unconvinced.

“To be sure it does,” the goblin continued, smoothly. “I know; I’ve tried it. And you can see for yourself that my balloon’s a success.”

“Yes, but it wouldn’t carry me,” Bob objected; “I’m too heavy.”

“I’ll have to shrink you,” Fitz Mee said quietly.

“Shrink me?” drawing back in alarm bordering on consternation.

“Yes; it won’t hurt you.”

“How—how’re you going to do it?”

“I’ll show you.”

The goblin got upon his feet, took a small bottle from his waistcoat pocket and deliberately unscrewed the top and shook out a tiny tablet.

“There,” he said, “take that.”

“Uk-uh!” grunted Bob, compressing his lips and shaking his head. “I don’t like to take pills.”

“This isn’t a pill,” Fitz explained, “it’s a tablet.”

“It’s all the same,” the boy declared obstinately.

“Won’t you take it?”

“No.”

“Then you can’t go with me.”

“I can’t?”

The goblin shook his head.

“Isn’t there some other way you can—can shrink me?”

Again Fitz Mee silently shook his head.

“W-e-ll,” Bob said slowly and reluctantly, “I’ll take it. But, say?”

“Well?”

“What’ll it do to me—just make me smaller?”

“That’s all.”

“How small will it make me?”

“About my size,” grinned the goblin.

“Oo—h!” ejaculated Bob. “And will it make me as—as ugly as you are?” in grave concern.

The goblin clapped his hands over his stomach, wriggled this way and that and laughed till the tears ran down his fat cheeks.

“Oh—ho!” he gasped at last. “So you think me ugly, do you?”

“Yes, I do,” the lad admitted candidly, a little nettled.

“Well, that’s funny,” gurgled the goblin; “for that’s what I think of you. So you see the matter of looks is a matter of taste.”

“Huh!” Bob snorted contemptuously. “But will that tablet change my looks? That’s what I want to know.”

“No, it won’t,” was the reassuring reply.

“And will I always be small—like you?”

“Look here!” Fitz Mee croaked hoarsely. “If you’re going with me, stop asking fool questions and take this tablet.”

“Give it to me,” Bob muttered, in sheer desperation.

And he snatched the tablet and swallowed it.

Immediately he shrunk to the size of the goblin.

“My!” he cried. “It feels funny to be so little and light.”

He sprang from the bed to the window-sill, and anticly danced a jig in his night garment.

“Get into your clothes,” the goblin commanded, “and let’s be off.”

Bob nimbly leaped to the floor, tore off his night-robe and caught up his trousers. Then he paused, a look of comical consternation upon his apple face.

“What’s the matter?” giggled the goblin.

“Why—why,” the boy gasped, his mouth wide open, “my clothes are all a mile too big for me!”

Fitz Mee threw himself prone upon his stomach, pummeled and kicked the window-sill, and laughed uproariously.

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Just why were his clothes to large, and what happened next you may ask? Well you will have to download the Little Green Goblin to find out for yourself.

The Little Green Goblin by James Ball Naylor – the 12 adventures of Bob and the Little Green Goblin.

ISBN: 9788835375777

DOWNLOAD LINK: https://bit.ly/33XA2Uk

10% of the publisher’s profits are donated to charity.
Yesterday’s books for today’s Charities.

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KEYWORDS/TAGS: The Little Green Goblin, childrens fantasy, folklore, fairy tale, fable, action, adventure, young adult, young people, readers, bibliophile, Midnight Visit, Storm, Danger, Giant, Lost, Desert, Magnetize, magnetise, Spring, Encounter, Wireless Message, Headquarters, strange lands, aeronaut, aëronaut, air-tank, anchor, Arabs, balloon, beast, binoculars, Bob, bottom, boy-giant, camels, chemist, children, companion, comrade, country, croaked, desire, devils, ejaculated, electric, Epilepsy, factories, feather-bed, feathers, Fitz, goblin, Goblinland, Goblinville, gob-tabs, gold, lad, laugh, laughed, leopard, lion, lips, little, locker, magic, mayor, medicine, Mee, moonlight, mountain, needle, nuggets, oasis, ocean, officer, palace, parrot, pop, Portuguese, Roberty, Boberty, sheik, south, sprite, Taylor, thumb-screw, thunder, wild,

Dido Is Caught

One nice, warm sunny day, when it was too hot to stay inside the den among the rocks, the nice bears were all out in front, lying in the shade of the woods.

“Oh, my! How hot it is!” cried Dido, and he opened his mouth wide, and let his red tongue hang out, for animals, such as dogs and bears, cool themselves off that way. You must have seen your dog, when he had run fast, after a cat, perhaps, open his mouth and breathe fast, with his tongue hanging out.

“Let’s go swimming in the lake again!” cried Dido to his brothers.

“All right,” agreed Gruffo.

“We’ll all go,” said Mr. Bear. “Come along.”

So off through the woods walked the family of bears toward the cool, blue lake, high up in the mountains. Dido could hardly wait to get there, and as soon as he saw, through the trees, the sparkle of the water he began to run. He ran so fast that he stumbled over a stone, and fell down.

“Oh, Dido!” called his mother. “You must be more careful. You must not go so fast. Something will happen to you some day if you do not look where you are going.”

“I didn’t hurt myself that time, anyhow,” answered Dido, as he got up, and jumped into the lake. There he swam about, as did the father and mother bear, and the other two cubs. Dido splashed his brothers every time he came near them, but they did not mind, for he was such a cute little fellow and he meant no harm. Besides, it was so warm that the more water they had on them the better Gruffo and Muffo liked it.

“It makes me hungry to go in swimming,” said Mrs. Bear. “I am going off in the woods to look for some berries.”

“I’m coming, too,” said Dido. “For I am hungry myself.”

Soon Mrs. Bear found a bush on which were growing some big red berries. These she pulled off with her forepaws, which were, to her, almost like our hands are to us, and the mother bear filled her mouth with the fruit. Dido did the same, and soon he was not as hungry as he had been. Then along came Mr. Bear, with Gruffo and Muffo, and they, too, ate the red berries off the bushes.

All at once Mr. Bear stopped eating, and, lifting his nose up in the air, sniffed very hard two or three times.

“What is the matter?” asked Mrs. Bear quickly.

“I think I smell a man,” answered the papa bear. “See if you can smell anything.”

Mrs. Bear lifted her nose up in the air and she, also, sniffed. Bears, you know, as do most wild animals, use their noses as much as they do their eyes to tell when there is danger. And to wild animals a man, nearly always, means danger. If you were out in the woods, and could not see any one, you could not tell, just by smelling the air, whether some person was near you or not—that is, unless they had a lot of perfume on them, and then, if the wind was blowing toward you, why you might smell that.

But bears have much better noses for smelling than have we, and they can smell a man in the woods even if he has no cologne on him.

“Sniff! Sniff!” went Mr. Bear.

“Sniff! Sniff!” went Mrs. Bear.

“Yes, I can surely smell a man,” the papa bear said in a low voice. “It is the first time I have known them to come around here.”

“And so can I smell a man,” added Mrs. Bear. “We had better get away from here.”

Then the bears ran off through the woods to their den. For though big bears are very strong and can fight well, they would much rather run away from a man than fight him, unless they find they cannot get away. For when a man goes into the woods where there are bears he nearly always has a gun with him, and while bears know they are stronger than a man they also know that a gun is stronger than a dozen bears.

When Dido, with his brothers and father and mother, got back to the den in the rocks, the little bear cub saw that his father was worried about something. Mr. Bear walked up and down in front of the pile of rocks, sniffing the air, and looking on all sides.

“What is the matter, Papa?” asked Dido, in bear talk, of course.

“It’s that man I smelled in the woods,” said Mr. Bear. “I fear he may find our den.”

“Well, what if he does?” asked Dido.

“Then it would not be safe for us to stay here,” answered Mrs. Bear. “If men are coming into our woods it is time for us to go away.”

“What! go away from our nice den?” asked Gruffo. For though the den was only a hole in the rocks, with a pile of leaves in one corner for a bed, still, to the bears, it was as much a home as your house is to you.

“Yes, it would not be safe to stay while men are around,” said Mr. Bear. “That is the first time I have ever smelled them in our woods. Though a friend of mine, Mr. Lion, who lives farther down the mountain, said he has often seen men near his cave. Once some men on elephants chased him, but he got away.”

“Have you ever seen a man?” asked Dido of his father.

“Oh, yes, often, but always afar off. And the men did not see me.”

“What does a man look like?” asked Dido, for he had never seen any, though he had heard of them.

“A man is a queer creature,” said Mr. Bear. “He walks up on his hind feet, as we do sometimes, but when he walks on his four feet he can only go slowly, like a baby. Even you could run away from a man on his four feet, Dido.”

“How queer!” said the little bear.

“But don’t try it,” said Mrs. Bear quickly. “Keep away from men, Dido, for they might shoot you with one of their guns.”

“What else is a man like?” the little bear asked.

“Well, he has a skin that he can take off and put on again,” said Mr. Bear.

“Oh, how very funny!” cried Dido. “Take off his skin? I should think it would hurt!”

“It doesn’t seem to,” said the papa bear. “I don’t understand how they do it, but they do.”

Of course what Mr. Bear thought was skin was a man’s clothes, which he takes off and puts on again. But though bears are very wise and smart in their own way, they don’t know much about men, except to be afraid of them.

“I do not like it that men are coming up in our woods,” said Mr. Bear. “It means danger. So be careful, Dido, and you, too, Gruffo and Muffo, that you do not go too far away. Perhaps the man has come up here to set a trap to catch us.”

“What is a trap?” asked Dido.

“It is something dangerous, to catch bears,” his mother told him. “Some traps are made of iron, and they have sharp teeth in them that catch bears by the leg and hurt very much. Other traps are like a big box, made of logs. If you go in one of these box traps the door will shut and you can not get out.”

“What happens then?” asked Dido.

“Then the man comes and gets you.”

“And what does he do with you?” the little bear cub wanted to know.

“That I cannot say,” answered Mrs. Bear. “Perhaps your father knows.”

Mr. Bear shook his head.

“All I know,” he answered, “is that the man takes you away if he finds you in his trap. But where he takes you I do not know, for I was never caught, and I hope I never will be.”

“I hope so, too,” said Dido, and he sniffed the air to see if he could smell the man, but he could not.

For a number of days after that the bears did not go far from their den in the rocks. They were afraid the man might shoot them.

But, after a while, all the berries and sweet roots close by had been eaten, and the bears had to go farther off. Besides, they wanted some fish, and they must go to the lake or river to catch them. So after Mr. Bear had carefully sniffed the air, and had not smelled the man-smell, the bears started off through the woods again to get something to eat.

Dido ran here and there, sometimes on ahead and again he would stay behind, slipping up back of his brothers to tickle them. Oh, but Dido was a jolly little bear, always looking for fun.

The bears found some more red berries, and a few blue ones, and some sweet roots, and they also caught some fish, which made a good dinner for them. Then they went swimming in the lake again before going back to their den.

In the afternoon, when Gruffo was asleep in the shade, Dido went softly up to him, and poured a paw full of water in his brother’s ear.

“Wuff! Ouch! What’s that? Is it raining?” cried Gruffo, suddenly waking up. Then he saw that Dido had played the trick on him, and he ran after the little bear. But Dido climbed up a tree to get away, and he did it in such a funny way, his little short tail going around like a Fourth of July pinwheel, that Gruffo had to sit down and laugh.

“Oh, you are such a funny cut-up bear!” he said, laughing harder than ever, and when a bear laughs he can’t very well climb a tree.

“Come on down, I won’t do anything to you,” said Gruffo, after a while, so Dido came down. Then he turned somersaults on a pile of soft leaves. Next he stood on his hind legs, and began striking at a swinging branch of a tree with his front paws, as you have seen a kitten play with a cord of a window curtain.

But Dido climbed up a tree to get away.

 “Dido is getting to be a real cute little cub,” said Mrs. Bear.

Then, all of a sudden, Dido struck at the tree branch, but he did not hit it and he fell over backward.

“Look out!” cried Mr. Bear. “You’ll hurt yourself, Dido.”

“I didn’t hurt myself that time,” said the little bear, “for I fell on some soft, green moss.”

“Well, there will not always be moss for you to fall on,” his mother said. “So look out.”

One day, when Mr. Bear came back from a long trip in the woods, he brought some wild honey in his paws. And oh! how good it tasted to Dido and Gruffo and Muffo!

“Show me where the bee-tree is, Papa,” begged Dido. “I want to get some more honey.”

“It is too far away,” answered the papa bear. “Besides, I saw a man in the woods as I was getting the honey out of a hollow tree. It would not be safe for you to go near it when men are around.”

But the honey tasted so good to Dido that the little bear cub made up his mind that he simply must have more.

“I know what I’ll do,” he said to himself. “When none of the others are watching me I am going off by myself in the woods and look for a bee-tree to get some honey. I don’t believe there’s any danger.”

So about a week after this, one day, Dido saw his two brothers asleep outside the den. Mr. Bear had gone off to the lake, perhaps to catch some fish, and Mrs. Bear was in the den, stirring up the leaves that made the bed, so it would be softer to lie on.

“Now’s my chance,” thought Dido, in the way bears have of thinking. “I’ll just slip off in the woods by myself, and find a honey-tree. I’ll bring some honey home, too,” said Dido, for he was not a selfish little bear.

Walking softly, so as not to awaken his brothers, and so his mother, making the leaf-bed in the den, would not know what he was doing, away slipped Dido to the woods.

He shuffled along, now and then finding some red berries to eat, or a bit of sweet root, and every little while he would lift his nose up in the air, as he had seen his father do, and sniff to see if he could smell a man-smell.

“But I don’t smell any,” said Dido. “I guess it’s all right.”

Then, all at once, he felt a little wind blowing toward him, and on the breeze came the nicest smell.

“Oh, it’s honey!” cried Dido. “It’s honey! I have found the honey-tree! Oh, how glad I am!”

He hurried on through the woods, coming nearer and nearer to the honey smell all the while, until, after a bit, he saw in among the trees something square, like a box, made of little logs piled together. And inside the thing like a box was a pile of honey. Dido could see it and smell it. But he did not rush up in a great hurry.

“That doesn’t look like the honey-tree father told about,” the little bear cub thought. “He said he had to climb a tree. This honey is low down. Still it is honey, so this must be a honey-tree, and if it is low down so much the better for me. I will not have to climb.”

Dido sniffed the air again. He wanted to see if there was a man-smell about. But all he could smell was the honey.

“Oh, I guess it’s all right,” said the bear cub. “I’m so hungry for that honey I can’t wait! Here I go!”

Dido fairly ran into the box and began to eat the honey on the floor of it. But, no sooner had he taken a bite, than suddenly a queer thing happened.

Bang! went something behind Dido, and when he looked around he saw that the box was shut tight. A sliding door had fallen down and poor Dido was a prisoner……

From: “Dido the Dancing Bear”

ISBN: 9788835390220

DOWNLOAD LINK: https://bit.ly/2xmFe8a

THE DIGGERS – The Australians in France during WWI

THE DIGGERS – The Australians in France during WWI

Patrick MacGill

In this small ebook, are but nine chapters which give an Australian perspective of their time spent on the Western Front in France.
The imperishable deeds of the Commonwealth’s glorious soldiers, least of all the Australians, or Diggers, have carved for themselves a deep niche in the topmost towers of the Temple of the Immortals. The story of the valour of the Diggers will live throughout the ages, and future generations of Australians will speak of them as we do of all the heroic figures of antiquity. Their valour has covered Australia with a lustre that shines throughout the world, so that her name, which in 1914 was little known, by 1918 had become a household word in the mouths of all the peoples of the earth.

The Great War made Australia—a young community without traditions—a nation, acutely and proudly conscious of its nationality. Upon that day some hundred years gone, when in the grey of early dawn the first Australian soldier leapt upon an unknown shore and in the face of a murderous fire scaled the heights of Gaba Tepe—a feat of arms almost unparalleled in the history of war—the young Australian Community put on the toga of nationhood, and in one stride entered on a footing equal to any other nation in the family of free nations of the earth. Gallipoli—scene of that most glorious attempt which though falling short of the promised success, lost nothing of its greatness—thy name is and forever will be held sacred to all!

When Gallipoli had been given up as a forlorn hope, the soldiers of the Commonwealth were relocated to Europe’s Western Front, when in the Spring of 1918 the great German offensive pressed back and by force of numbers broke through the sorely tried British line, the Australian divisions were hurried down from the North and rushed up to stem the German armies.

The story of the battles fought by the Australians before Amiens is amongst the most thrilling in the history of this great world conflict. Here the fate of civilization was decided. The great German army, marching along the road in column of route, like the armies of Napoleon a hundred years before,  reached the crest of high land overlooking Amiens, and with but a few miles between them and the key to Paris, were held up by a veritable handful of Australians, later reinforced as the rest of the Divisions came to hand. It was the turning of the tide; the fighting raged around Villers-Bretonneux, but the car of the German Juggernaut rolled forward no more. An impassable barrier had been set up beyond which the enemy could not pass. But the young soldiers of Australia, not satisfied with arresting his onward march, began to force the Hun back; at first slowly, and then faster and faster, until in the great offensive of August 8, when along with four Divisions of Canadians and two British, they swept him back in headlong rout, nor gave him pause until breaking through the vaunted Hindenburg line they stood victorious at Beaurevoir.

The deeds of these brave men will remain forever fresh in the minds of the Commonwealth and Allied nations. Australia has reason to be proud of her war effort; she has done great things; but she has paid a great price. That a small community of just five million recruited and sent 330,000 men twelve thousand miles across the seas, is a great thing. The number dead—57,000—with total casualties—289,723—show how great the price Australia paid for Liberty.

Indeed, it was the “new” colonies of South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Canada which paid a heavy price in war dead. But it would only be another 21 years before they would be asked to pay yet again.

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Download this FREE book via our StreetLib store at:

https://store.streetlib.com/en/patrick-macgill/the-diggers-the-australians-in-france/

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TOLD IN THE COFFEE HOUSE – 29 Turkish and Islamic Folk Tales

TOLD IN THE COFFEE HOUSE

29 Turkish and Islamic Folk Tales

Herein are 29 of the most notable Turkish and Islamic stories recorded and translated by Adler in partnership with Allan Ramsay.

Herein you will find stories like:
HOW THE HODJA SAVED ALLAH
THE HANOUM AND THE UNJUST CADI
HOW COBBLER AHMET BECAME THE CHIEF ASTROLOGER
THE WISE SON OF ALI PASHA
THE MERCIFUL KHAN
KING KARA-KUSH OF BITHYNIA
WE KNOW NOT WHAT THE DAWN MAY BRING FORTH
THE EFFECTS OF RAKI
and many, many more.

You are invited to download these 29 stories in ebook form for only US$1.99

Link: https://store.streetlib.com/en/anon-e-mouse/told-in-the-coffee-house-29-turkish-and-islamic-folk-tales/

 

It must be noted that while Turkish folklore is entertaining and is guaranteed to give rise to a smile, a chuckle or even laughter, the stories do have a gravity of their own and will impart a wisdom only found in Eastern lands.

During the course of a number of visits to Istanbul, Cyrus Adler* became interested in the tales that were being told in the coffee houses of the city, and many they were.

Turkish Coffee Houses have an intimacy which encourages the sharing of stories. They usually consist of a little more than rooms, with walls made of small panes of glass. The furniture consists of a tripod with a contrivance for holding the kettle, and a fire to keep the coffee boiling. A carpeted bench traverses the entire length of the room. This is occupied by turbaned Turks, their legs folded under them, smoking hookahs or chibouks, and sipping coffee. A few will be engaged in a game of backgammon, but the majority enter into conversation, at first only in syllables, which gradually gives rise to a general discussion. Finally, some sage of the neighborhood comes in, and the company appeals to him to settle the point at issue. This he usually does by telling a story to illustrate his opinion. Some of the stories told on these occasions are adaptations of those already known in Arabic and Persian literature, but the Turkish mind gives them a new setting and a peculiar philosophy. They are characteristic of the habits, customs, and methods of thought of the people, and for this reason seem worthy of preservation.

Most of the stories have been collected by Mr. Allan Ramsay, who, by a long residence in Constantinople, has had special, and many, opportunities for learning to know the modern Turk.
Cyrus Adler (1863 – 1940) was an American educator, Jewish religious leader and scholar.
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