Fourth Grade Read Aloud Banquet

The Snake

A narrow fellow in the grass

Occasionally rides;

You may have met him,—did you not,

His notice sudden is.


The grass divides as with a comb,

A spotted shaft is seen;

And then it closes at your feet

And opens further on.


He likes a boggy acre

A floor too cool for corn

Yet when a child, and barefoot,

I more than once, at morn,


Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash

Unbraiding in the sun,—

When, stooping to secure it,

It wrinkled, and was gone.


Several of nature's people

I know, and they know me;

I feel for them a transport

Of cordiality;


But never met this fellow,

Attended or alone,

Without a tighter breathing,

And zero at the bone.

  Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Week 44 Tom and Becky in the Cave from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain George III—A Story of a Spinning Wheel from Our Island Story by H. E. Marshall Rain from The Story Book of Science by Jean Henri Fabre Malagis and the Boys from Our Little Frankish Cousin of Long Ago by Evaleen Stein The First Australian Colony from The Struggle for Sea Power by M. B. Synge The Many-Furred Creature from Fairy Tales Too Good To Miss—Across the Lake by Lisa M. Ripperton The Crown of Thorns (Part 2 of 2) from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
Father and Son from God's Troubadour, The Story of St. Francis of Assisi by Sophie Jewett
"Lady Poverty" from God's Troubadour, The Story of St. Francis of Assisi by Sophie Jewett 		Thanksgiving at Grandfather's Farm from The Fall of the Year by Dallas Lore Sharp The Statesman from Four American Patriots by Alma Holman Burton The Lion and the Hare from The Tortoise and the Geese and Other Fables of Bidpai by Maude Barrows Dutton Tell's Second Shot from Stories of William Tell Told to the Children by H. E. Marshall Underground Paper Palaces from Will o' the Wasps by Margaret Warner Morley What Gruffanuff Did to Giglio and Betsinda from The Rose and the Ring by William Makepeace Thackeray
  The Mountain and the Squirrel by Ralph Waldo Emerson Crossing the Bar by Alfred Lord Tennyson       Oct 30
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The Aesop for Children  by Milo Winter

The Bat and the Weasels

A Bat blundered into the nest of a Weasel, who ran up to catch and eat him. The Bat begged for his life, but the Weasel would not listen.

"You are a Mouse," he said, "and I am a sworn enemy of Mice. Every Mouse I catch, I am going to eat!"

"But I am not a Mouse!" cried the Bat. "Look at my wings. Can Mice fly? Why, I am only a Bird! Please let me go!"


[Illustration]

The Weasel had to admit that the Bat was not a Mouse, so he let him go. But a few days later, the foolish Bat went blindly into the nest of another Weasel. This Weasel happened to be a bitter enemy of Birds, and he soon had the Bat under his claws, ready to eat him.

"You are a Bird," he said, "and I am going to eat you!"

"What," cried the Bat, "I, a Bird! Why, all Birds have feathers! I am nothing but a Mouse. 'Down with all Cats,' is my  motto!"

And so the Bat escaped with his life a second time.

Set your sails with the wind.