Second Grade Read Aloud Banquet

Songs for January

Alone

A very old woman
Lives in yon house.
The squeak of the cricket,
The stir of the mouse,
Are all she knows
Of the earth and us.

Once she was young,
Would dance and play,
Like many another
Young popinjay;
And run to her mother
At dusk of day.

And colours bright
She delighted in;
The fiddle to hear,
And to lift her chin,
And sing as small
As a twittering wren.

But age apace
Comes at last to all;
And a lone house filled
With the cricket's call;
And the scampering mouse
In the hollow wall.

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Week 2	Master Cherry Gives a Present to Geppetto from Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi	King Alfred and the Beggar from Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin	The Snowball from The Seasons: Winter by Jane Marcet	Fruit for the King's Son from The Girl Who Sat by the Ashes by Padraic Colum	Julius Caesar from On the Shores of the Great Sea by M. B. Synge	Aunt Harriet Has a Cough (Part 2 of 3) from Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher	How the River Jordan Became Dry from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
	The Tooth Thrall from Viking Tales by Jennie Hall	Suet Pudding for Woodpeckers (Part 2 of 3) from Outdoor Visits by Edith M. Patch	The Tortoise and the Ducks from The Aesop for Children by Milo Winter	I Make My First Voyage from Robinson Crusoe Written Anew for Children by James Baldwin	Cupid and Apollo from A Child's Book of Myths and Enchantment Tales by Margaret Evans Price	The Stranger from the North from The Adventures of Prickly Porky by Thornton Burgess	The Blacksmith Story from The Sandman: His Ship Stories by Willliam J. Hopkins
	The Mountain and the Squirrel by Ralph Waldo Emerson	Wynken, Blynken, and Nod by Eugene Field	How Doth the Little Crocodile by Lewis Carroll	The Plaint of the Camel by Charles Edward Carryl	Tired Tim by Walter de la Mare	Norse Lullaby by Eugene Field	Granny by James Whitcomb Riley

The Aesop for Children by Milo Winter

The Ass and the Load of Salt

A Merchant, driving his Ass homeward from the seashore with a heavy load of salt, came to a river crossed by a shallow ford. They had crossed this river many times before without accident, but this time the Ass slipped and fell when halfway over. And when the Merchant at last got him to his feet, much of the salt had melted away. Delighted to find how much lighter his burden had become, the Ass finished the journey very gayly.

Next day the Merchant went for another load of salt. On the way home the Ass, remembering what had happened at the ford, purposely let himself fall into the water, and again got rid of most of his burden.

The angry Merchant immediately turned about and drove the Ass back to the seashore, where he loaded him with two great baskets of sponges. At the ford the Ass again tumbled over; but when he had scrambled to his feet, it was a very disconsolate Ass that dragged himself homeward under a load ten times heavier than before.

The same measures will not suit all circumstances.

The Ass and the Load of Salt