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For the Children's Hour |
by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey |
A choice collection of stories for the preschool child, carefully selected, adapted, and arranged by two veteran kindergarten teachers. Includes nature stories, holiday stories, fairy tales and fables, as well as stories of home life. Emphasis is placed on fanciful tales for their value in the training of the imagination and on cumulative tales for developing a child's sense of humor and appealing to his instinctive love of rhyme and jingle. Ages 4-7 | 464 pages |
$15.95 |
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THE DAISY
C. S. B. Adapted from Hans Christian Andersen.
[193] OUT in the country, close by the road, there was a
little garden with flowers and a fence about it. Quite
near it, by a ditch, in some beautiful green grass,
grew little Daisy. The sun shone as brightly on the
Daisy as on the fine flowers in the garden, and so it
grew from hour to hour. One day it stood in full
bloom, a little yellow sun in the center, with white
leaves like rays spreading all around it. It never
minded that no one noticed it down in the grass. It was
very merry, and looked up at the warm sun, and listened
to the Lark that sang up in the sky.
"I can see and hear it," it thought. "The sun shines
on me, and the wind kisses me. How much I have had
given me!"
Within the garden grew many proud flowers. The less
scent they had the more they strutted. The peonies
blew themselves out to be greater than the rose, but it
is not size which makes one great. The tulips had the
gayest colors and they knew it very well. They never
noticed the little Daisy outside, but she looked at
them, and thought:
"How beautiful they look! Yes, the Lark flies across
and visits them."
And just as it thought that—"keevit"—down flew the
Lark, but not to the roses, and peonies, and tulips;
oh, no; down in the grass to the lowly Daisy, which
started so with joy that it did not know what to think.
The little bird hopped about and sang:
"Oh, what a sweet flower, with a gold heart and a
silver dress!"
[194] For the yellow point in the Daisy looked like
gold, and the little leaves around it shone silvery
white. Such a happy little Daisy! The Lark kissed it,
and sang to it, and then flew away again.
The next morning, when the Daisy stretched her little
arms up to the air and the light, she heard the Lark
singing, but it was a sad song. Yes, the poor Lark had
good reason to be sad: he had been caught, and he sat
in a cage by an open window. He sang of free and happy
roaming, the young corn in the green fields, and the
journey he would like to make high up in the air; but
there he sat, shut up in a cage.
The little Daisy wanted very much to help him. She
quite forgot everything else. She could think only of
the poor Lark that was shut up, and how she was not
able to do anything for him. Just then two little boys
came out to the garden. One of them had a knife in his
hand. They went straight up to the little Daisy, who
could not, at all, make out what they wanted.
"Here, we may cut a fine piece of turf for the Lark,"
said one of the boys, and he started cutting off a
square patch about the Daisy, so that the flower
remained standing on its piece of turf.
"Tear off the Daisy," cried one of the boys.
"No; let it stay," said the other. "It looks so nice."
So it was left, and was put into the cage with the
Lark.
The poor bird was beating its wings against the wires
of its cage. "There is no water here," he cried.
The little Daisy could not speak, but she lifted her
head as high as she could and remembered the dew she
had gathered early in the morning. Then the Lark
thrust his beak into the cool turf, and it refreshed
him, and he drank the dew that lay at the
[195] roots
of the flower. His eyes fell upon the little Daisy and
he nodded to it, and began to sing a happy song again.
"They have given you to me," he said, "with the little
patch of earth on which you grew. Every little blade
of grass shall be a great tree for me, and every one of
your white leaves a fragrant flower."
So the little Daisy lifted her face higher and higher,
and was very happy; for was she not comforting the
Lark?
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