How to Tell Stories to Children, And Some Stories to Tell eBook

Sara Cone Bryant
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 204 pages of information about How to Tell Stories to Children, And Some Stories to Tell.

How to Tell Stories to Children, And Some Stories to Tell eBook

Sara Cone Bryant
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 204 pages of information about How to Tell Stories to Children, And Some Stories to Tell.

In and out the little dog ran like the wind, round and about, always in the right place, driving—­coaxing—­pushing—­making the sheep mind like a good school-teacher, and never frightening them, till they were all safely in!  All the other dogs together could not do as much as the little strange dog.  She was a perfect wonder.  And no one knew whose dog she was or where she came from.  The farmers grew to watch for her, every week, and they called her “the wee fell yin” which is Scots for “the little terror”; they used to say when they saw her coming, “There’s the wee fell yin!  Now we’ll get them in.”

Every farmer would have liked to keep her, but she let no one catch her.  As soon as her work was done she was off and away like a fairy dog, no one knew where.  Week after week this happened, and nobody knew who the little strange dog was.

But one day Wylie went to walk with her two masters, and they happened to meet some sheep farmers.  The sheep farmers stopped short and stared at Wylie, and then they cried out, “Why, that’s the dog!  That’s the wee fell yin!” And so it was.  The little strange dog who helped with the sheep was Wylie.

Her masters, of course, didn’t know what the farmers meant, till they were told all about what I have been telling you.  But when they heard about the pretty strange dog who came to market all alone, they knew at last where Wylie went, every Tuesday night.  And they loved her better than ever.

Wasn’t it wise of the dear little dog to go and work for other people when her own work was taken away?  I fancy she knew that the best people and the best dogs always work hard at something.  Any way she did that same thing as long as she lived, and she was always just as gentle, and silky-haired, and loving as at first.

LITTLE DAYLIGHT[1]

[Footnote 1:  Adapted from At the Back of the North Wind, by George Macdonald.]

Once there was a beautiful palace, which had a great wood at one side.  The king and his courtiers hunted in the wood near the palace, and there it was kept open, free from underbrush.  But farther away it grew wilder and wilder, till at last it was so thick that nobody knew what was there.  It was a very great wood indeed.

In the wood lived eight fairies.  Seven of them were good fairies, who had lived there always; the eighth was a bad fairy, who had just come.  And the worst of it was that nobody but the other fairies knew she was a fairy; people thought she was just an ugly old witch.  The good fairies lived in the dearest little houses!  One lived in a hollow silver birch, one in a little moss cottage, and so on.  But the bad fairy lived in a horrid mud house in the middle of a dark swamp.

Now when the first baby was born to the king and queen, her father and mother decided to name her “Daylight,” because she was so bright and sweet.  And of course they had a christening party.  And of course they invited the fairies, because the good fairies had always been at the christening party when a princess was born in the palace, and everybody knew that they brought good gifts.

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How to Tell Stories to Children, And Some Stories to Tell from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.