So they gossip at their play,
Heedless of the fleeting day;
One speaks of the Long Ago
Where his dead hopes buried lie;
One with chubby cheeks aglow
Prattleth of the By-and-By;
Side by side, they build their blocks—­
Shuffle-Shoon and Amber-Locks.

Afterwhile
[Footnote:  From the poem to Afterwhiles by James
Whitcomb Riley.  Used by special permission of the
publishers—­The Bobbs-Merrill Company.]

By James Whitcomb Riley

Afterwhile we have in view
The old home to journey to: 
Where the Mother is, and where
Her sweet welcome waits us there. 
How we’ll click the latch that locks
In the pinks and hollyhocks,
And leap up the path once more
Where she waits us at the door;
How we’ll greet the dear old smile
And the warm tears—­afterwhile.

WINDY NIGHTS

By Robert Louis Stevenson

Whenever the moon and stars are set,
Whenever the wind is high,
All night long in the dark and wet,
A man goes riding by. 
Late in the night when the fires are out,
Why does he gallop and gallop about? 
Whenever the trees are crying aloud,
And ships are tossed at sea,
By, on the highway, low and loud,
By at the gallop goes he. 
By at the gallop he goes, and then
By he comes back at the gallop again.

THE SNOW QUEEN

By Hans Christian Andersen

THE FIRST STORY

WHICH TREATS OF THE MIRROR AND FRAGMENTS

Look you, now we’re going to begin.  When we are at the end of the story we shall know more than we do now, for he was a bad goblin.  He was one of the very worst, for he was a demon.  One day he was in very good spirits, for he had made a mirror which had this peculiarity, that everything good and beautiful that was reflected in it shrank together into almost nothing, but that whatever was worthless and looked ugly became prominent and looked worse than ever.  The most lovely landscapes seen in this mirror looked like boiled spinach, and the best people became hideous, or stood on their heads and had no bodies; their faces were so distorted as to be unrecognizable, and a single freckle was shown spread out over nose and mouth.  That was very amusing, the demon said.  When good, pious thoughts passed through any person’s mind these were again shown in the mirror, so that the demon chuckled at his artistic invention.

Those who visited the goblin school—­for he kept a goblin school—­ declared everywhere that a wonder had been wrought.  For now, they asserted, one could see, for the first time, how the world and the people in it really looked.  Now they wanted to fly up to heaven, to sneer and scoff at the angels themselves.  The higher they flew with the mirror, the more it grinned; they could scarcely hold it fast.  They flew higher and higher, and then the mirror trembled so terribly amid its grinning that it fell down out of their hands to the earth, where it was shattered into a hundred million million and more fragments.