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 40	Real Robbers Seize the Box of Gold from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain	George II—The Story of Flora MacDonald from Our Island Story by H. E. Marshall	Effects of the Thunderbolt from The Story Book of Science by Jean Henri Fabre	Rainolf and the Palace Pages from Our Little Frankish Cousin of Long Ago by Evaleen Stein	The Death of Nelson from The Struggle for Sea Power by M. B. Synge	Blue Beard from Fairy Tales Too Good To Miss—Across the Lake by Lisa M. Ripperton	Saint Edward the Confessor from Our Island Saints by Amy Steedman
	Joan of Arc from Heroes of the Middle Ages by Eva March Tappan	Along the Highway of the Fox from The Fall of the Year by Dallas Lore Sharp	"The Vindicator of Congress" from Four American Patriots by Alma Holman Burton	The Merchant and His Iron from The Tortoise and the Geese and Other Fables of Bidpai by Maude Barrows Dutton	The Meeting of the Three Patriots from Stories of William Tell Told to the Children by H. E. Marshall	How the Nest Looks Inside from Will o' the Wasps by Margaret Warner Morley	How Prince Giglio Behaved Himself from The Rose and the Ring by William Makepeace Thackeray
		Jaffár by Leigh Hunt	This Is My Letter to the World by Emily Dickinson	Autumn—A Dirge by Percy Bysshe Shelley	The Sparrow's Nest from Poems by Mary Howitt	Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll	The Ghosts of the Buffaloes by Vachel Lindsay

The Aesop for Children by Milo Winter

The Cat and the Fox

Once a Cat and a Fox were traveling together. As they went along, picking up provisions on the way—a stray mouse here, a fat chicken there—they began an argument to while away the time between bites. And, as usually happens when comrades argue, the talk began to get personal. "You think you are extremely clever, don't you?" said the Fox. "Do you pretend to know more than I? Why, I know a whole sackful of tricks!"

"Well," retorted the Cat, "I admit I know one trick only, but that one, let me tell you, is worth a thousand of yours!"

Just then, close by, they heard a hunter's horn and the yelping of a pack of hounds. In an instant the Cat was up a tree, hiding among the leaves.

"This is my trick," he called to the Fox. "Now let me see what yours are worth."

But the Fox had so many plans for escape he could not decide which one to try first. He dodged here and there with the hounds at his heels. He doubled on his tracks, he ran at top speed, he entered a dozen burrows,—but all in vain. The hounds caught him, and soon put an end to the boaster and all his tricks.

Common sense is always worth more than cunning.