Fourth Grade Read Aloud Banquet

The Snake

A narrow fellow in the grass

Occasionally rides;

You may have met him,—did you not,

His notice sudden is.


The grass divides as with a comb,

A spotted shaft is seen;

And then it closes at your feet

And opens further on.


He likes a boggy acre

A floor too cool for corn

Yet when a child, and barefoot,

I more than once, at morn,


Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash

Unbraiding in the sun,—

When, stooping to secure it,

It wrinkled, and was gone.


Several of nature's people

I know, and they know me;

I feel for them a transport

Of cordiality;


But never met this fellow,

Attended or alone,

Without a tighter breathing,

And zero at the bone.

  Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Week 26 The Cat and the Pain-Killer from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain The Story of How the King Was Brought to His Death from Our Island Story by H. E. Marshall The Epeira's Bridge from The Story Book of Science by Jean Henri Fabre A Boon Granted from The Little Duke by Charlotte M. Yonge The Trial of Warren Hastings from The Struggle for Sea Power by M. B. Synge To Your Good Health from Fairy Tales Too Good To Miss—Across the Lake by Lisa M. Ripperton The Little Child in the Arms of Jesus from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
Peter the Hermit Leads the First Crusade from Heroes of the Middle Ages by Eva March Tappan Woods Medicine from The Spring of the Year by Dallas Lore Sharp The Farm and the Shop from Four American Patriots by Alma Holman Burton The Hen and the Falcon from The Tortoise and the Geese and Other Fables of Bidpai by Maude Barrows Dutton The Sword Gram and the Dragon Fafnir from The Children of Odin: A Book of Northern Myths by Padraic Colum Bombus, the Bumble-Bee from The Bee People by Margaret Warner Morley Goblin Counsels from The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
    A Day by Emily Dickinson   The Barefoot Boy from Poems by John Greenleaf Whittier   An Old Song of Fairies, Anonymous
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The Aesop for Children  by Milo Winter

The Dog and His Reflection

A Dog, to whom the butcher had thrown a bone, was hurrying home with his prize as fast as he could go. As he crossed a narrow footbridge, he happened to look down and saw himself reflected in the quiet water as if in a mirror. But the greedy Dog thought he saw a real Dog carrying a bone much bigger than his own.


[Illustration]

If he had stopped to think he would have known better. But instead of thinking, he dropped his bone and sprang at the Dog in the river, only to find himself swimming for dear life to reach the shore. At last he managed to scramble out, and as he stood sadly thinking about the good bone he had lost, he realized what a stupid Dog he had been.

It is very foolish to be greedy.