Fourth Grade Read Aloud Banquet

The Owl

When cats run home and light is come,

And dew is cold upon the ground,

And the far-off stream is dumb,

And the whirring sail goes round,

And the whirring sail goes round;

Alone and warming his five wits,

The white owl in the belfry sits.


When merry milkmaids click the latch,

And rarely smells the new-mown hay,

And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch

Twice or thrice his roundelay,

Twice or thrice his roundelay;

Alone and warming his five wits,

The white owl in the belfry sits.

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Week 3 The Old Gentleman from The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit Henry VI of Windsor—Red Rose and White from Our Island Story by H. E. Marshall The Building of the City from The Story Book of Science by Jean Henri Fabre How the Baron Came Home Shorn from Otto of the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle The Siege of Vienna by the Turks from The Awakening of Europe by M. B. Synge The Lords of the White and Grey Castles from Fairy Tales Too Good To Miss—Upon the Rock by Lisa M. Ripperton The Manger of Bethlehem from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
Genseric the Vandal from Heroes of the Middle Ages by Eva March Tappan White-Foot from Winter by Dallas Lore Sharp Christopher Columbus from Builders of Our Country: Book I by Gertrude van Duyn Southworth The Merchant of Seri from Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt Iduna and Her Apples: How Loki Put the Gods in Danger from The Children of Odin: A Book of Northern Myths by Padraic Colum Familiar Moths from Insect Life by Arabella B. Buckley Being Wanted from Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit
He Prayeth Best by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Star-Talk by Robert Graves Hope by Emily Dickinson The Pilgrim by John Bunyan The Better Land from Poems by Felicia Dorothea Hemans The Moon's the North Wind's Cooky by Vachel Lindsay The Snow by Emily Dickinson
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The Aesop for Children  by Milo Winter

The Lark and Her Young Ones

A Lark made her nest in a field of young wheat. As the days passed, the wheat stalks grew tall and the young birds, too, grew in strength. Then one day, when the ripe golden grain waved in the breeze, the Farmer and his son came into the field.

"This wheat is now ready for reaping," said the Farmer. "We must call in our neighbors and friends to help us harvest it."

The young Larks in their nest close by were much frightened, for they knew they would be in great danger if they did not leave the nest before the reapers came. When the Mother Lark returned with food for them, they told her what they had heard.


[Illustration]

"Do not be frightened, children," said the Mother Lark. "If the Farmer said he would call in his neighbors and friends to help him do his work, this wheat will not be reaped for a while yet."

A few days later, the wheat was so ripe, that when the wind shook the stalks, a hail of wheat grains came rustling down on the young Larks' heads.

"If this wheat is not harvested at once," said the Farmer, "we shall lose half the crop. We cannot wait any longer for help from our friends. Tomorrow we must set to work, ourselves."

When the young Larks told their mother what they had heard that day, she said:

"Then we must be off at once. When a man decides to do his own work and not depend on any one else, then you may be sure there will be no more delay." There was much fluttering and trying out of wings that afternoon, and at sunrise next day, when the Farmer and his son cut down the grain, they found an empty nest.

Self-help is the best help.