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TO THE CHILDREN This volume is made up of stories from seven famous books. These books are as different as they can possibly be; and yet there are not many boys and girls who do not like every one of them. The chief reason for this is because they seem so true, so much more "real" than most other stories. When you read about Tom Thumb, for instance, you do not really believe that there ever was a little boy no bigger than his mother's thumb; at... more...

THE FLAGS THAT BROUGHT THE COLONISTS More than three hundred years ago a little sailing vessel set out from Holland, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and followed down our coast from Greenland. Its captain, Henry Hudson, was in search of a quick and easy route to Asia, and when he entered the mouth of the river that is named for him, he hoped that he had found a strait leading to the Asiatic coast. He was disappointed in this, but the Indians... more...

ITHE LITTLE FRICTION MATCH I remember being once upon a time ten miles from a store and one mile from a neighbor; the fire had gone out in the night, and the last match failed to blaze. We had no flint and steel. We were neither Indians nor Boy Scouts, and we did not know how to make a fire by twirling a stick. There was nothing to do but to trudge off through the snow to the neighbor a mile away and beg some matches. Then was the time when we... more...

IN A COAL MINE Did you ever wonder how beds of coal happened to be in the earth? This is their story. Centuries ago, so many thousand centuries that even the most learned men can only guess at their number, strange things were coming to pass. The air was so moist and cloudy that the sun's rays had hard work to get through. It was warm, nevertheless, for the crust of the earth was not nearly so thick as it is now, and much heat came from the... more...