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 7 For Valour from The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit Richard III—Two Little Princes in the Tower from Our Island Story by H. E. Marshall A Numerous Family from The Story Book of Science by Jean Henri Fabre The Red Cock Crows on Drachenhausen from Otto of the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle The Battle of Blenheim from The Awakening of Europe by M. B. Synge The Christening from Fairy Tales Too Good To Miss—Upon the Rock by Lisa M. Ripperton
Changes in the Palace from Fairy Tales Too Good To Miss—Upon the Rock by Lisa M. Ripperton 		Jesus in the Desert, and beside the River from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
Theodoric the Ostrogoth from Heroes of the Middle Ages by Eva March Tappan A Chapter of Things To Do This Winter from Winter by Dallas Lore Sharp Sir Walter Raleigh from Builders of Our Country: Book I by Gertrude van Duyn Southworth The Measure of Rice from Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt How Frey Won Gerda, the Giant Maiden, and How He Lost His Magic Sword from The Children of Odin: A Book of Northern Myths by Padraic Colum Apis Mellifica, or the Honey-Bee from The Bee People by Margaret Warner Morley A Siege and Bed from Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit
Sweet and Low by Alfred Lord Tennyson Romance by Robert Louis Stevenson The Snowdrop by Alfred Lord Tennyson The Inchcape Rock by Robert Southey   The Queen of the Orkney Islands by Laura E. Richards Escape at Bedtime by Robert Louis Stevenson
First row Previous row          Next row Last row
The Aesop for Children  by Milo Winter

The Lion's Share

A long time ago, the Lion, the Fox, the Jackal, and the Wolf agreed to go hunting together, sharing with each other whatever they found.

One day the Wolf ran down a Stag and immediately called his comrades to divide the spoil.

Without being asked, the Lion placed himself at the head of the feast to do the carving, and, with a great show of fairness, began to count the guests.

"One," he said, counting on his claws, "that is myself, the Lion. Two, that's the Wolf, three, is the Jackal, and the Fox makes four."

He then very carefully divided the Stag into four equal parts. "I am King Lion," he said, when he had finished, "so of course I get the first part. This next part falls to me because I am the strongest, and this is mine because I am the bravest."

He now began to glare at the others very savagely. "If any of you have any claim to the part that is left," he growled, stretching his claws meaningly, "now is the time to speak up."

Might makes right.


[Illustration]