Nell Speed - "Molly Brown's Orchard Home"

Charles Dickens - "The Cricket on the Hearth"

Various - "Eighth Annual Report"

Maria Edgeworth - "The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Junior Classics, Volume 1

U >> Unknown >> The Junior Classics, Volume 1



THE JUNIOR CLASSICS

SELECTED AND ARRANGED BY

WILLIAM PATTEN, MANAGING EDITOR OF THE HARVARD CLASSICS

INTRODUCTION BY CHARLES W. ELIOT, LL.D., PRESIDENT EMERITUS OF HARVARD
UNIVERSITY

WITH A READING GUIDE BY WILLIAM ALLAN NEILSON, Ph. D., PROFESSOR OF
ENGLISH, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, PRESIDENT SMITH COLLEGE, NORTHAMPTON,
MASS., SINCE 1917




VOLUME ONE

Fairy and Wonder Tales




INTRODUCTION

The purpose of The Junior Classics is to provide, in ten volumes
containing about five thousand pages, a classified collection of tales,
stories, and poems, both ancient and modern, suitable for boys and
girls of from six to sixteen years of age. Thoughtful parents and
teachers, who realize the evils of indiscriminate reading on the part
of children, will appreciate the educational value of such a
collection. A child's taste in reading is formed, as a rule, in the
first ten or twelve years of its life, and experience has shown that
the childish mind will prefer good literature to any other, if access
to it is made easy, and will develop far better on literature of proved
merit than on trivial or transitory material.

The boy or girl who becomes familiar with the charming tales and poems
in this collection will have gained a knowledge of literature and
history that will be of high value in other school and home work. Here
are the real elements of imaginative narration, poetry, and ethics,
which should enter into the education of every English-speaking child.

This collection, carefully used by parents and teachers with due
reference to individual tastes and needs, will make many children enjoy
good literature. It will inspire them with a love of good reading,
which is the best possible result of any elementary education. The
child himself should be encouraged to make his own selections from this
large and varied collection, the child's enjoyment being the object in
view. A real and lasting interest in literature or in scholarship is
only to be developed through the individual's enjoyment of his mental
occupations.

The most important change which has been made in American schools and
colleges within my memory is the substitution of leading for driving,
of inspiration for drill, of personal interest and love of work for
compulsion and fear. The schools are learning to use methods and
materials which interest and attract the children themselves. The
Junior Classics will put into the home the means of using this happy
method.

Committing to memory beautiful pieces of literature, either prose or
poetry, for recitation before a friendly audience, acting charades or
plays, and reading aloud with vivacity and sympathetic emotion, are
good means of instruction at home or at school This collection contains
numerous admirable pieces of literature for such use. In teaching
English and English literature we should place more reliance upon
processes and acts which awaken emotion, stimulate interest, prove to
be enjoyable for the actors, and result in giving children the power of
entertaining people, of blessing others with noble pleasures which the
children create and share.

>From the home training during childhood there should result in the
child a taste for interesting and improving reading which will direct
and inspire its subsequent intellectual life. The training which
results in this taste for good reading, however unsystematic or
eccentric it may have been, has achieved one principal aim of
education; and any school or home training which does not result in
implanting this permanent taste has failed in a very important respect.
Guided and animated by this impulse to acquire knowledge and exercise
the imagination through good reading, the adult will continue to
educate him all through life.

The story of the human race through all its slow development should be
gradually conveyed to the child's mind from the time he begins to read,
or to listen to his mother reading; and with description of facts and
actual events should be mingled charming and uplifting products of the
imagination. To try to feed the minds of children upon facts alone is
undesirable and unwise. The immense product of the imagination in art
and literature is a concrete fact with which every educated human being
should be made somewhat familiar, that product being a very real part
of every individual's actual environment.

The right selection of reading matter for children is obviously of high
importance. Some of the mythologies, Old Testament stories, fairy
tales, and historical romances, on which earlier generations were
accustomed to feed the childish mind, contain a great deal that is
barbarous, perverse, or cruel; and to this infiltration into children's
minds, generation after generation, of immoral, cruel, or foolish ideas
is probably to be attributed in part the slow ethical progress of the
race. The commonest justification of this thoughtless practice is that
children do not apprehend the evil in the bad mental pictures with
which we foolishly supply them; but what should we think of a mother
who gave her children dirty milk or porridge, on the theory that the
children would not assimilate the dirt? Should we be less careful
about mental and moral food materials? The Junior Classics have been
selected with this principle in mind, without losing sight of the fact
that every developing human being needs to have a vision of the rough
and thorny road over which the human race has been slowly advancing
during thousands of years.

Whoever has committed to memory in childhood such Bible extracts as
Genesis i, the Ten Commandments, Psalm xxiii, Matthew v, 8-12, The
Lord's Prayer, and I Corinthians xiii, such English prose as Lincoln's
Gettysburg speech, Bacon's "Essay on Truth," and such poems as Bryant's
"Waterfowl," Addison's "Divine Ode," Milton's Sonnet on his Blindness,
Wotton's "How happy is he born or taught," Emerson's "Rhodora,"
Holmes's "Chambered Nautilus," and Gray's Elegy, and has stamped them
on his brain by frequent repetition, will have set up in his mind high
standards of noble thought and feeling, true patriotism, and pure
religion. He will also have laid in an invaluable store of good
English.

While the majority of the tales and poems are intended for children who
have begun to do their own reading, there will be found in every volume
selections fit for reading aloud to younger children. Throughout the
collection the authors tell the stories in their own words; so that the
salt which gave them savor is preserved. There are some condensations
however, such as any good teller of borrowed stories would make; but as
a rule condensation has been applied only in the case of long works
which otherwise could not have been included. The notes which precede
the condensations supply explanations, and answer questions which
experience has shown boys and girls are apt to ask about the works
condensed or their authors.

The Junior Classics constitute a set of books whose contents will
delight children and at the same time satisfy the legitimate ethical
requirements of those who have the children's best interests at heart.

Charles W. Eliot

NOTE

Notices of copyright on material used in these volumes appear on the
back of the title pages of the particular volumes in which the stories
are printed. A complete list of acknowledgments to authors and
publishers, for their kind permission to use copyrighted material, is
given on pages 3 to 6 of Volume Ten.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION Charles, W. Eliot

PREFACE William Patten

TALES OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS

Manabozho H. R. Schoolcraft

The Woodpecker H. R. Schoolcraft

Why the Diver Duck Has So Few Tail Feathers H. R. Schoolcraft

Manabozho Changed to Wolf H. R. Schoolcraft

Manabozho is Robbed H. R. Schoolcraft

Manabozho and the Woodpeckers H. R. Schoolcraft

The Boy and the Wolves Andrew Lang

The Indian Who Lost His Wife Andrew Lang

TALES FROM INDIA

Punchkin E. Frere

The Sun, Moon and Wind E. Frere

Why the Fish Laughed Joseph Jacob

The Farmer and Money Lender Joseph Jacob

Pride Goeth Before a Fall Joseph Jacob

The Wicked Sons Joseph Jacob

Tiger, Brahman, and Jackal Flora Annie Steel

The Lambikin Flora Annie Steel

The Rat's Wedding Flora Annie Steel

The Jackal and the Partridge Flora Annie Steel

The Jackal and the Crocodile Flora Annie Steel

The Jackal and the Iguana Flora Annie Steel

The Bear's Bad Bargain Flora Annie Steel

The Thief and the Fox Ramaswami Raju

The Farmer and the Fox Ramaswami Raju

The Fools and the Drum Ramaswami Raju

The Lion and the Goat Ramaswami Raju

The Glowworm and Jackdaw Ramaswami Raju

The Camel and the Pig Ramaswami Raju

The Dog and the Dog Dealer Ramaswami Raju

The Tiger, Fox, and Hunters Ramaswami Raju

The Sea, the Fox, and the Wolf Ramaswami Raju

The Fox in the Well Ramaswami Raju

TALES FROM THE NORSELAND

Ashiepattle P. C. Asbjörnsen

The Squire's Bride P. C. Asbjörnsen

The Doll in the Grass P. C. Asbjörnsen

The Bear and the Fox P. C. Asbjörnsen

The Lad Who Went to the North Wind Sir George W. Dasent

The Husband Who Was to Mind the House Sir George W. Dasent

How One Went Out to Woo Sir George W. Dasent

Why the Bear is Stumpy-Tailed Sir George W. Dasent

Boots and the Princess Sir George W. Dasent

The Witch in the Stone Boat Andrew Lang

TALES FROM FRANCE, SPAIN, AND POLAND

The Snuffbox Paul Sébillot

The Golden Blackbird Paul Sébillot

The Half-Chick Andrew Lang

The Three Brothers Hermann R. Kletke

The Glass Mountain Hermann R. Kletke

TALES FROM RUSSIA

Huntsman the Unlucky John T. Naaké

Story of Little Simpleton John T. Naaké

The Golden Fish Lillian M. Gask

TALES FROM SERBIA

The Wonderful Hair W.S. Karajich

The Language of Animals W.S. Karajich

The Emperor Trojan's Ears W.S. Karajich

The Maiden Who Was Wiser Than the King W.S. Karajich

AN IRISH TALE

The Three Sons Lady Gregory

TALES FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Hok Lee and the Dwarfs Andrew Lang

A Dreadful Boar Adele M. Fielde

The Five Queer Brothers Adele M. Fielde

The Accomplished Teakettle A.B. Mitford

Adventures of Little Peachling A.B. Mitford

A TALE FROM NEW GUINEA

The Two Lizards Annie Ker

A TALE FROM JAMAICA

De King and De Peafowl Mary P. Milne-Horne

SOME OLD FAVORITES

Hansel and Grethel W. and J. Grimm

Thumbling W. and J. Grimm

The Six Swans W. and J. Grimm

Snow-White and Rose-Red W. and J. Grimm

The Ugly Duckling Hans C. Andersen

The Tinder-Box Hans C. Andersen

The Constant Tin Soldier Hans C. Andersen

The Fir Tree Hans C. Andersen

The Flying Trunk Hans C. Andersen

The Darning Needle Hans C. Andersen

Pen and Inkstand Hans C. Andersen

Cinderella Miss Mulock

Little Red Riding-Hood Charles Perrault

The Story of the Three Bears Robert Southey

Puss in Boots Charles Perrault

Jack the Giant-Killer Joseph Jacobs

Tom Thumb Joseph Jacobs

Blue Beard Charles Perrault

The Brave Little Tailor Anonymous

The Sleeping Beauty Charles Perrault

The Fair One With Golden Locks Miss Mulock

Beauty and the Beast Mme. d'AuLnoy

Jack and the Beanstalk Anonymous

Hop-o'-My-Thumb Joseph Jacobs

The Goose-Girl Anonymous

He Who Knew Not Fear Anonymous

THE FABLES OF AESOP

The Town Mouse and the

Country Mouse Aesop

The Man, Boy, and Donkey Aesop

The Shepherd's Boy Aesop

Androcles Aesop

The Fox and the Stork Aesop

The Crow and the Pitcher Aesop

The Frogs Desiring a King Aesop

The Frog and the Ox Aesop

The Cock and the Pearl Aesop

The Fox Without a Tail Aesop

The Fox and the Cat Aesop

The Dog in the Manger Aesop

The Fox and the Goat Aesop

Belling the Cat Aesop

The Jay and the Peacock Aesop

The Ass and the Lap-Dog Aesop

The Ant and the Grasshopper Aesop

The Woodman and the Serpent Aesop

The Milkmaid and Her Pail Aesop

The Lion and the Mouse Aesop

Hercules and the Waggoner Aesop

The Lion's Share Aesop

The Fox and the Crow Aesop

The Dog and the Shadow Aesop

The Wolf and the Lamb Aesop

The Bat, Birds, and Beasts Aesop

The Belly and the Members Aesop

The Fox and the Grapes Aesop

The Swallow and the Birds Aesop

ILLUSTRATIONS

HE OFTEN TREMBLED AT WHAT HE HEARD AND SAW, Manabozho the Mischief-
Maker, Frontispiece illustration in color from the painting by Dan
Sayre Groesbeck

WHILE THEY WERE STUPIDLY STARING, THE KETTLE BEGAN FLYING ABOUT THE
ROOM, The Accomplished and Lucky Teakettle, From the painting by
Warwick Goble

A VERY OLD WOMAN, WALKING UPON CRUTCHES, CAME OUT, Hansel and Grethel,
>From the painting by Arthur Rackham

THEN BLUE BEARD BAWLED OUT SO LOUD THAT HE MADE THE WHOLE HOUSE
TREMBLE, Blue Beard, From the painting by Edmund Dulac

BEING INFORMED OF EVERYTHING BY A LITTLE DWARF WHO WORE SEVEN-LEAGUE
BOOTS, Sleeping Beauty, From the painting by Edmund Dulac

PREFACE

THERE are some things in this world we can get along without, but, the
experience of many thousand years has shown us that the fairy tale is
not one of them. There must have been fairy tales (or fables, or folk
tales, or myths, or whatever name we choose to give them) ever since
the world began. They are not exclusively French, German, Greek,
Russian, Indian or Chinese, but are the common property of the whole
human family and are as universal as human speech.

All the world over, fairy tales are found to be pretty much the same.
The story of Cinderella is found in all countries. Japan has a Rip Van
Winkle, China has a Beauty and the Beast, Egypt has a Puss in Boots,
and Persia has a Jack and the Beanstalk.

Those wise people who have made a careful study of literature, and
especially of what we call folk tales or fairy tales or fables or
myths, tell us that they all typify in some way the constant struggle
that is going on in every department of life. It may be the struggle
of Summer against Winter, the bright Day against dark Night, Innocence
against Cruelty, of Knowledge against Ignorance. We are not obliged to
think of these delightful stories as each having a meaning. Our
enjoyment of them will not be less if we overlook that side, but it may
help us to understand and appreciate good books if we remember that the
literature of the world is the story of man's struggle against nature;
that the beginnings of literature came out of the mouths of story-
tellers, and that the stories they told were fairy tales-imaginative
stories based on truth.

There is one important fact to remember in connection with the old
fairy tales, and that is that they were repeated aloud from memory, not
read from a book or manuscript.

The printing of books from type may be said to date from the year 1470,
when Caxton introduced printing into England. It is said that the
first book printed in English which had the pages numbered was a book
of tales, "Aesop's Fables."

As late as 1600 printed books were still so rare that only rich men
could own them. There was one other way of printing a story-on
sheepskin (split and made into parchment) with a pen-but that was a
long and laborious art that could only be practiced by educated men who
had been taught to write. The monks were about the only men who had
the necessary education and time, and they cared more for making copies
of the Bible and Lives of the Saints than they did of fairy tales. The
common people, and even kings and queens, were therefore obliged to
depend upon the professional story-teller.

Fairy tales were very popular in the Middle Ages. In the long winter
months fields could not be cultivated, traveling had to be abandoned,
and all were kept within doors by the cold and snow. We know what the
knight's house looked like in those days. The large beamed hail or
living room was the principal room. At one end of it, on a low
platform, was a table for the knight, his family, and any visiting
knights and ladies. At the other tables on the main floor were the
armed men, like squires and retainers, who helped defend the castle
from attack, and the maids of the household.

The story-teller, who was sometimes called a bard or skald or minstrel,
had his place of honor in the center of the room, and when the meal was
over he was called upon for a story. These story-tellers became very
expert in the practice of their art, and some of them could arouse
their audiences to a great pitch of excitement. In the note that
precedes the story "The Treason of Ganelon," in the volume "Heroes and
Heroines of Chivalry," you can see how one of these story-tellers, or
minstrels, sang aloud a story to the soldiers of William the Conqueror
to encourage them as he led them into battle.

The fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm were first published in
1812. They spent thirteen years collecting them, writing them down as
they were told by the peasants in Hesse, a mountainous province of
Germany lying far removed from the great main roads.

Their friends helped them, but their best friend was the wife of a
cowherd, a strong, intelligent woman of fifty, who had a perfect genius
for storytelling. She knew she told the stories well, and that not
many had her gift. The Grimms said that though she repeated a story
for them three times, the variations were so slight as to be hardly
apparent.

The American Indian stories of Manabozho the Mischief-Maker and his
adventures with the Wolf and the Woodpeckers and the Ducks were
collected in very much the same way by Henry R. Schoolcraft (1793-
1864), the explorer and traveler, who lived among the Indian tribes for
thirty years.

Mrs. Steel has told us how she collected her Hindu stories, often
listening over and over to poor story-tellers who would spoil a story
in trying to tell it, until one day her patience would be rewarded by
hearing it from the lips of the best storyteller in the village, who
was generally a boy.

As all nations have their fairy tales, you will find in this collection
examples of English, Irish, French, German, Scandinavian, Icelandic,
Russian, Polish, Serbian, Spanish, Arabian, Hindu, Chinese, and
Japanese fairy tales, as well as those recited around the lodge fires
at night by American Indians for the entertainment of the red children
of the West.

I hope the work may prove for many a boy and girl (of any age up to a
hundred) the Golden Bridge over which they can plunge into that
marvelous world of fairies, elves, goblins, kobolds, trolls, afreets,
jinns, ogres, and giants that fascinates us all, lost to this world
till some one wakes us up to say "Bedtime!"

Such excursions fill the mind with beautiful fancies and help to
develop that most precious of our faculties, the imagination.

WILLIAM PATTEN.

MANABOZHO, THE MISCHIEF-MAKER

Adapted from H. R. Schoolcraft

THERE was never in the whole world a more mischievous busybody than
that notorious giant Manabozho. He was everywhere, in season and out
of season, running about, and putting his hand in whatever was going
forward.

To carry on his game he could take almost any shape he pleased. He
could be very foolish or very wise, very weak or very strong, very rich
or very poor-just as happened to suit his humor best. Whatever anyone
else could do, he would attempt without a moment's reflection. He was
a match for any man he met, and there were few manitoes* (*good
spirits or evil spirits) that could get the better of him. By turns he
would be very kind or very cruel, an animal or a bird, a man or a
spirit, and yet, in spite of all these gifts, Manabozho was always
getting himself involved in all sorts of troubles. More than once, in
the course of his adventures, was this great maker of mischief driven
to his wits' ends to come off with his life.

To begin at the beginning, Manabozho, while yet a youngster, was living
with his grandmother near the edge of a great prairie. It was on this
prairie that he first saw animals and birds of every kind; he also
there made first acquaintance with thunder and lightning. He would sit
by the hour watching the clouds as they rolled by, musing on the shades
of light and darkness as the day rose and fell.

For a stripling, Manabozho was uncommonly wide-awake. Every sight he
beheld in the heavens was a subject of remark, every new animal or bird
an object of deep interest, and every sound was like a new lesson which
he was expected to learn. He often trembled at what he heard and saw.

The first sound he heard was that of the owl, at which he was greatly
terrified, and, quickly descending the tree he had climbed, he ran with
alarm to the lodge. "Noko! noko! grandmother!" he cried. "I have
heard a monedo."

She laughed at his fears, and asked him what kind of a noise it made.
He answered. "It makes a noise like this: ko-ko-ko-ho!"

His grandmother told him he was young and foolish; that what he heard
was only a bird which derived its name from the peculiar noise it made.

He returned to the prairie and continued his watch. As he stood there
looking at the clouds he thought to himself, "It is singular that I am
so simple and my grandmother so wise; and that I have neither father
nor mother. I have never heard a word about them. I must ask and find
out."

He went home and sat down, silent and dejected. Finding that this did
not attract the notice of his grandmother, he began a loud lamentation,
which he kept increasing, louder and louder, till it shook the lodge
and nearly deafened the old grandmother.

"Manabozho, what is the matter with you?" she said, "you are making a
great deal of noise."

Manabozho started off again with his doleful hubbub, but succeeded in
jerking out between his big sobs, "I haven't got any father nor mother,
I haven't."

Knowing that he was of a wicked and revengeful nature, his grandmother
dreaded to tell him the story of his parentage, as she knew he would
make trouble of it.

Manabozho renewed his cries and managed to throw out for a third or
fourth time, his sorrowful lament that he was a poor unfortunate who
had no parents or relatives.

At last she said to him, to quiet him, "Yes, you have a father and
three brothers living. Your mother is dead. She was taken for a wife
by your father, the West, without the consent of her parents. Your
brothers are the North, East, and South; and being older than you your
father has given them great power with the winds, according to their
names. You are the youngest of his children. I have nursed you from
your infancy, for your mother died when you were born."

"I am glad my father is living," said Manabozho, "I shall set out in
the morning to visit him."

His grandmother would have discouraged him, saying it was a long
distance to the place where his father, Ningabinn, or the West, lived.

This information seemed rather to please than to discourage Manabozho,
for by this time he had grown to such a size and strength that he had
been compelled to leave the narrow shelter of his grandmother's lodge
and live out of doors. He was so tall that, if he had been so
disposed, he could have snapped off the heads of the birds roosting on
the topmost branches of the highest trees, as he stood up, without
being at the trouble to climb. And if he had at any time taken a fancy
to one of the same trees for a walking stick, he would have had no more
to do than to pluck it up with his thumb and finger and strip down the
leaves and twigs with the palm of his hand.

Bidding good-by to his old grandmother, who pulled a very long face
over his departure, Manabozho set out at a great pace, for he was able
to stride from one side of a prairie to the other at a single step.

He found his father on a high mountain far in the west. His father
espied his approach at a great distance, and bounded down the
mountainside several miles to give him welcome. Apparently delighted
with each other, they reached in two or three of their giant paces the
lodge of the West which stood high up near the clouds.

They spent some days in talking with each other-for these two great
persons did nothing on a small scale, and a whole day to deliver a
single sentence, such was the immensity of their discourse, was quite
an ordinary affair.

One evening Manabozho asked his father what he was most afraid of on
earth.

He replied-"Nothing."

"But is there nothing you dread here-nothing that would hurt you if you
took too much of it? Come, tell me."

Manabozho was very urgent, so at last his father said: "Yes, there is a
black stone to be found a couple of hundred miles from here, over that
way," pointing as he spoke. "It is the only thing on earth I am afraid
of, for if it should happen to hit me on any part of my body it would
hurt me very much." The West made this important circumstance known to
Manabozho in the strictest confidence.

"Now you will not tell anyone, Manabozho, that the black stone is bad
medicine for your father, will you?" he added. "You are a good son,
and I know you will keep it to yourself. Now tell me, my darling boy,
is there not something that you don't like?"

Manabozho answered promptly-"Nothing."

His father, who was of a steady and persevering nature, put the same
question to him seventeen times, and each time Manabozho made the same
answer-' 'Nothing."

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