Fourth Grade Read Aloud Banquet

A Bird Came Down the Walk

A bird came down the walk:

He did not know I saw;

He bit an angle-worm in halves

And ate the fellow, raw.


And then he drank a dew

From a convenient grass,

And then hopped sidewise to the wall

To let a beetle pass.


He glanced with rapid eyes

That hurried all abroad,

They looked like frightened beads, I thought;

He stirred his velvet head


Like one in danger; cautious,

I offered him a crumb,

And he unrolled his feathers

And rowed him softer home


Than oars divide the ocean,

Too silver for a seam,

Or butterflies, off banks of noon,

Leap, plashless, as they swim.

  Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Week 16 The Glorious Whitewasher from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain Mary I—How a Candle Was Lit in England from Our Island Story by H. E. Marshall Flax and Hemp from The Story Book of Science by Jean Henri Fabre An Untimely Death from The Little Duke by Charlotte M. Yonge The Black Hole of Calcutta from The Struggle for Sea Power by M. B. Synge The Cat That Walked by Himself from Fairy Tales Too Good To Miss—Upon the Rock by Lisa M. Ripperton The Twelve Disciples and the Sermon on the Mount from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
Rollo the Viking from Heroes of the Middle Ages by Eva March Tappan An Old Apple Tree from The Spring of the Year by Dallas Lore Sharp Champlain from Builders of Our Country: Book I by Gertrude van Duyn Southworth The Fox, the Hen, and the Drum from The Tortoise and the Geese and Other Fables of Bidpai by Maude Barrows Dutton Ægir's Feast: How Thor Triumphed from The Children of Odin: A Book of Northern Myths by Padraic Colum Miss Apis and Her Sisters from The Bee People by Margaret Warner Morley The Mines from The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
Wishing by William Allingham The Wind in a Frolic by William Howitt A Slash of Blue by Emily Dickinson The Daffodils by William Wordsworth The Yellow Violet from Poems by William Cullen Bryant The Elephant by Hilaire Belloc O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman
First row Previous row          Next row Last row
The Aesop for Children  by Milo Winter

The Lion, the Ass, and the Fox

A Lion, an Ass, and a Fox were hunting in company, and caught a large quantity of game. The Ass was asked to divide the spoil. This he did very fairly, giving each an equal share.

The Fox was well satisfied, but the Lion flew into a great rage over it, and with one stroke of his huge paw, he added the Ass to the pile of slain.

Then he turned to the Fox.

"You divide it," he roared angrily.

The Fox wasted no time in talking. He quickly piled all the game into one great heap. From this he took a very small portion for himself, such undesirable bits as the horns and hoofs of a mountain goat, and the end of an ox tail.


[Illustration]

The Lion now recovered his good humor entirely.

"Who taught you to divide so fairly?" he asked pleasantly.

"I learned a lesson from the Ass," replied the Fox, carefully edging away.

Learn from the misfortunes of others.