Family Books

FOUR YEARS OLD"I was four yesterday; when I'm quite oldI'll have a cricket-ball made of pure gold;I'll never stand up to show that I'm grown;I'll go at liberty upstairs or down."He trotted upstairs. Perhaps trotting is not quite the right word, but I can't find a better. It wasn't at all like a horse or pony trotting, for he went one foot at a time, right foot... more...

A NEW GAME "Mother, what can we do now?" "Tell us something to play, please! We want to have some fun!" As Harry and Mabel Blake said this they walked slowly up the path toward the front porch, on which their mother was sitting one early Spring day. The two children did not look very happy. "What can we do?" asked Hal, as he was called more often than Harry. "There... more...

CHAPTER I. A LETTER FOR SUNNYSIDE COTTAGE. Thomas Dawson was busy in the kitchen trying to make the kettle boil, and to get the fire clear that he might do a piece of toast. He had already tidied up the grate and swept the floor, and as he stood by the table with the loaf in his hand, about to cut a slice, his eye wandered down through the dewy, sunny garden, where every tree and bush was beginning to... more...

CHAPTER I. HOME AGAIN It was a clear, apple-green evening in May, and Four Winds Harbour was mirroring back the clouds of the golden west between its softly dark shores. The sea moaned eerily on the sand-bar, sorrowful even in spring, but a sly, jovial wind came piping down the red harbour road along which Miss Cornelia's comfortable, matronly figure was making its way towards the village of Glen... more...

MAKING FRIENDS."Good onset bodes good end."Spenser. "Well?" said Ralph. "Well?" said Sylvia. "Well?" said Molly. Then they all three stood and looked at each other. Each had his or her own opinion on the subject which was uppermost in their minds, but each was equally reluctant to express it, till that of the others had been got at. So each of the three said... more...

WYGATE SCHOOL "Emily Underwood, 19; Stanley Smith, 20; Cyril Bruce, 21; Nellie Underwood, 22; Elizabeth Bruce, 23—bottom of the class!" Mr. Sharman took off his eyeglasses, rubbed them, and put them on again. Then he looked very hard at the little girl at the end of the furthest form, who was hanging her head and industriously biting a slate pencil. "Stand up, Elizabeth Bruce. Put down... more...

THE RIDE. When I was a child I used to glance at the first sentence in a new book to see whether it looked interesting. If it began, "There was once a boy, who lived in a fine house," I was encouraged to go on. Now I wish to make these little books very interesting to my young readers. I want to have the words so simple that they can be read and not skipped over, and at the same time my object... more...

MERRY life had Dame Desley and her four children led in their rural home. The sound of their cheerful voices, the patter of their little feet, the laugh, the shout, and the song, had been heard from morning till night. I will not stop to tell of all the daisy-chains and cowslip-balls made by the children under the big elm-tree that grew on their mother's lawn; or how they gathered ripe... more...

CHAPTER I. THE WAY IT BEGAN. Nobody except Miss Lucy Armacost would have thought of starting an orphan asylum with one orphan. Even she might not have done it but for Molly Johns. As for Molly, she never dreamed of such a thing. She was just careering down the avenue one windy afternoon in early December, upon one roller skate, and Miss Lucy was just coming up the block, walking rather unsteadily upon... more...

TWO OF THE TYRANTS. "Here, Buck Bradford, black my boots, and be quick about it." That was what Ham Fishley said to me. "Black them yourself!" That was what I said to Ham Fishley. Neither of us was gentlemanly, nor even civil. I shall not apologize for myself, and certainly not for Ham, though he inherited his mean, tyrannical disposition from both his father and his mother. If he had... more...