LONDON:
PRINTED BY JOSEPH MASTERS,
ALDERSGATE STREET.
| JOHN WILSON. |
| JANE NORTH. |
| MARY AND LUCY. |
| ANN SHARP. |
| THE COAT. |
| THE BURNT CHILD. |
| GOOD ADVICE. |
| TOM AND FRED. |
| THE KIND SISTER. |
Johnny Wilson and Ned Brown were playing at ball one day, and the ball hit John on the hand: he was very angry, and ran after Ned and [Pg 8] beat him very hard. Just then, a man came by and gave John a box on the ear which made him let go of Ned, and he began to cry. Then the man said, “You beat that little boy and forget how you hurt him, but you do not like it yourself."
Then John was sorry, and said he would never do so any more; he shook [Pg 9][Pg 10] hands with Ned, and he kept his word, and all who knew him loved him.
Jane North was an idle girl; she did not like her book, and when she was told to read her lesson she would cry, and say she wanted to play with her doll. So her doll was taken from her till she had read; but she read ill, and would not learn to write. So she grew up a dunce, and [Pg 12][Pg 13][Pg 14] no one loved her.
Had each a nice doll, and they took care of them. One day Tom called them to play at ball, and they ran away to play, and left the two dolls on a chair. By and by the cat came in the room, and pulled the dolls to pieces, thinking I dare say, that it was fine fun to tear them to bits, [Pg 16] and scamper round the room with poor dolly's nose in her mouth.
When the girls came back, and saw the nice new dolls all in bits, they began to cry, and to beat poor puss; but their mamma said, “No, you must not beat puss, for you left your dolls about, and the cat did not know that they were not for her to play with. Next time you must be more [Pg 17][Pg 18] careful of your toys."
Was a kind girl. One day she was out, and a poor girl came to her and said, “Give me some bread, I have had none to eat all day.” So Ann said, “I have no bread, but here is sixpence that my mamma gave me, take it, [Pg 20] and buy some bread.”
The poor girl took it and said, “Oh! thank you, miss, I can now get [Pg 21][Pg 22] something to eat, and will take some to my poor daddy who is sick.”
“Do not go out without your warm coat, Tom; it is a hard frost, and the snow lies thick on the ground, and you will catch cold, if you do, and then poor Tom will be ill.”
“But I feel quite warm.”
“Yes, you do now; but see what a large fire there is here, out of doors there is no fire, and the cold wind blows; and if you have no warm coat on, you will feel cold.” [Pg 24]
But Tom thought he knew best, so he went out with no coat on, and he caught a bad cold and cough, and he was put to bed quite ill. Now Jack and Will and Tom were to have had some fine sport on the frozen pond in the farm, but Tom was too ill to go. When he was in bed he thought how silly he had been, to think he knew better than his kind friends; and then he said to himself, he would try and do all that he was bid when he got well. [Pg 25][Pg 26]
One day a child wanted to reach something off the mantel shelf, and not being tall enough, she stood on the fender, and her mother said, “Fanny, you must not get on the fender, it will turn over, and then you will fall in the fire and be sadly burnt.”
But Fanny was not a good child, and did not always do as she was bid: so when her mother went out of the room, she wanted to get her father's watch that lay [Pg 28] on the mantel shelf, and she stood on the fender to reach it, but the fender turned over, and Fanny fell in the hearth and her clothes took fire. She screamed loudly, but she was not heard for a little time, and when her mother ran to her, all her clothes were in a blaze; she rolled the rug over to put out the flame and then carried her to bed.
Poor Fanny was sadly burnt, and it was a long time before she was well, and she had a great many scars on her face and neck which never wore off. [Pg 29][Pg 30]
Jack did not love his book; he was idle, and was cross when he was sent to school, and one day when he ought to have gone, he played about the meadows instead; and he met Sam, who was going to school, and he said, “Come and play with me, Sam, and we will have some fun.”
“No,” said Sam, “I must go and learn to read, or I shall be a [Pg 32] dunce; so come with me, Jack, and then after school is over we will play.”
“But it is so hard to learn,” said Jack, “and I want to climb that tree to get a bird's nest.”
“No, do not get a bird's nest, for it is cruel,” said Sam. “Come with me and try to earn the prize, come, Jacky, to please me.”
Jack then went to school, and he found that when he tried to learn, it was not very hard, and he could soon read pretty stories, and won a nice prize. [Pg 33][Pg 34]
“Tom, have a game at trapbatandball.”—“I do not know how to play at it.”—“Well I will teach you, look at me; that is the way, now do it yourself. That is right, you will soon learn to do it fast.”—“Yes, it is not hard to learn: now let us go and have a race. One, two, three, and off!”
“Tom, you have won it.”—“Yes, I run better than you; and you [Pg 36] play trapbatandball better than I do.”—“I am too hot to run any more, let us sit down and get cool.”—“I am to have a seat put near this tree, should you like one too?” “Yes, but I have no wood to make one.”—“Well, we will ask Dick to give you some wood; come now and ask him.” [Pg 37][Pg 38]
“Come, dear Ann, sit down and sew a little.”—“Yes, mamma, shall I hem my frock?”—“Yes, do.”
Ann was a good child, and always did as she was bid, and when she had done her work her mamma told her to play with her brother. Ann had a little garden of her own, and she had made an arbour in it. When she went to play she found her brother crying, [Pg 40] for he had fallen down, and broken her arbour to pieces. But Ann said, “You must not cry, dear, never mind breaking the arbour, we will soon build it up.” So she kissed him, and they worked till tea time and made a better arbour than before. And Ann felt much more happy than she would have been had she scolded and been cross with poor little George.
J. MASTERS, PRINTER, ALDERSGATE STREET, LONDON. [Pg 41][Pg 42]
Project Gutenberg's Little Stories for Little Children, by Anonymous This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Little Stories for Little Children Author: Anonymous Release Date: October 5, 2007 [EBook #22896] [NR, 2008] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 Produced by Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
Transcriber's note:
There was no Table of Contents in the original, one has been added to this etext.