Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To get her poor Dog a bone:
But when she got there,
The cupboard was bare,
And so the poor Dog had none.
She went to the Baker's
To buy him some bread:
When she came back,
The poor Dog was dead.
Jiminy Cricket, the great traveller, was looking for somewhere to spend the night. He found his way to the workshop of the old wood carver, Geppetto. Once inside, Jiminy noticed a wooden puppet carved in the likeness of a little boy.
The puppet was nearly finished: only its eyebrows and mouth were missing. At that moment, Jiminyheard someone coming downstairs and skipped out of sight.
Once upon a time,peter and his grandfather lived in a house next to a beautiful green meadow.
Next to the meadow, there was a dark forest.
And in the middle of the forest, therew lived a hungry wolf.
He was an old hand at air raids now.
As the yell of the siren climbed the sky, he came smoothly out of his dreams. Not scared. Only his stomach clamped down tight for action, as his hands found his clothes laid ready in the dark. Hauled one jumper, then another, over his pyjamas. Thrust both stockinged feet together through his trousers and into his shoes. Then bent to tie his laces thoroughly. A loose lace had tripped him once, in the race to the shelter. He remembered the smashing blow as the ground hit his chin; the painful week after, not able to eat with a bitten tongue.
He grabbed his school raincoat off the door, pulling the door wide at the same time. All done by feel; no need to put the light on. Lights were dangerous.
He passed Dulcie's door, heard Mam and Dulcie muttering to each other, Dulcie sleepy and cross, Mam sharp and urgent. Then he thundered downstairs; the crack of light from the kitchen door lighting up the edge of each stair-tread. Dad was sitting in his warden's uniform, hauling on his big black boots, his grey hair standing up vertically in a bunch, like a cock's comb. Without looking up, Dad said, 'Bloody Hitler! Four bloody nights in a row!
There was a strong smell of Dad's sweaty feet, and the fag he had burning in the ashtray. That was all Harry had time to notice; he had his own job - the two objects laid ready in the chair by the door. The big roll of blankets, wrapped in a groundsheet because the shelter was damp, done up with a big leather strap of Dad's.
Once upon a time, in the village of Snettering on-Snoakes in the Kingdom of Biddle, a blacksmith's wife named Gussie gave birth to a baby girl. Gussie and her husband, Sam, named the baby Lorelei, and they loved her dearly.
Lorelei's smile was sweet and her laughter was music. But as an infant she smiled only four times.
It all started the afternoon I fell off my bike and knocked myself out.
I was having a bike race with Freddie in Bray Wood - I was right out in the lead too - when I hit something.
Freddie found me lying 'horribly still and charged off to get help.
The next thing I remember is trying to open my eyes, only they stung, because some dust had got into them. So everything was blurred. No-one was about, yet I sensed someone was nearby. Then I saw this figure a little way from me.
Prince Michael lived long ago in the land of Hungary, in the east of Europe. His family's huge estate was out on the vast plains, where they gained their wealth from breeding and selling fine horses. At last the time came when Michael reached the age to get married.
“A wealthy young man like you should marry a noble lady,” said his mother. “A princess from the great city would be suitable. I will make enquiries.”
A few weeks later, Prince Michael's mother, the Grand Duchess Irma, said that there were two suitable princesses and two suitable great ladies living in the city of Golden Walls. She looked carefully at her son.
“You must have two new suits of clothes made and buy some jewellery as presents and call on the young ladies to see which of them you like best,” she said.
Prince Michael shook his head. “I don't think that is a good idea,” he said.
"If the young ladies know I am looking for a wife, they are sure to be on their best behaviour. I shall not see what they are really like at all. I will not go calling," continued the prince. “I will disguise myself as a poor boy and ask the servants and common folk how the princesses and great ladies behave to them.
Once upon a time there lived a rich gentleman who had a lovely young daughter. As he grew old and frail, he knew that he would soon die and leave his golden-haired daughter alone in the world, so he resolved to marry again.
Unfortunately his choice fell upon a haughty and selfish woman who had two daughters of her own. Now both the daughters were ugly and selfish, and very jealous of their sweettempered and beautiful stepsister, So when the father died, they dressed her in rags and put her to work in the kitchen, where no one could see and admire her beauty.
It was here that he met Dr. Joseph Bell, whose handling of cases inspired him to formulate his own methods of detection. These were to prove a great success with the many detective novels that he was to write in the future.
When Doyle set up practice in Southsea, he thought of writing only as a subsidiary source of living. It was during the periods when he waited for his patients that he first began to write, and A Study in Scarlet was published in 1887. Micah Clarke followed, and finally established him as a writer. Several stories were written, one after the other, the greatest achievement being his creation of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes was to become one of the most popular fictional characters in the world, loved for his detective adventures. At one time Arthur Conan Doyle “killed” him in a story, but public protest forced him to bring Holmes back to life.
Doyle, however, continued with his medical practice, and served as a physician in the Boer War. This enhanced his reputation even further, and he was knighted for his services,
"What will happen now?” I asked Mamma as we watched the plane take the teacher away.
“Maybe no more school.” Mamma twitched her shoulder a little to show she didn't care. Mamma never went to school much, just a few months here and there when her family wasn't trapping or out at spring muskrat camp. She said she hated school when she was little.
The little plane circled our village and then flew low over Andreson's store and waggled its wings at us. That was Sam White, the pilot, saying good-bye to us.
It was Sam White laughing, too. Sam thought nearly everything was funny.
IN MY YOUNGER and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,' he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'
He didn't say any more, but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought-frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.
HERE is James Henry Trotter when he was about four years old.
Up until this time, he had had a happy life, living peacefully with his mother and father in a beautiful house beside the sea. There were always plenty of other children for him to play with, and there was the sandy beach for him to run about on, and the ocean to paddle in. It was the perfect life for a small boy.
Then, one day, James's mother and father went to London to do some shopping, and there a terrible thing happened. Both of them suddenly got eaten up (in full daylight, mind you, and on a crowded street) by an enormous angry rhinoceros which had escaped from the London Zoo.
Posy Bates was in her favourite hidey-hole, reading
'Posy!' came her mother's voice from below. ‘Where are you?
Posy carried on reading. She had just got to the part where three space invaders were about to land in a playground and take over a school. It was the kind of thing she wished would happen at her school
"Posy! Come along, I want you!
This time Posy did raise her head, just for a moment.
"Take no notice, Punch and Judy,' she said.
Punch and Judy did not reply, for the very good reason that they were both spiders, in a jam-jar.
Posy Bates was playing hide-and-seek with the bag lady. It was no ordinary game, either.
"It's in dead earnest,” she thought. 'Life or death, practically.'
She knew for a fact that the bag lady had been reported to the police by Mary Pye's mother.
‘As if it was a crime, being homeless!' Posy thought indignantly. ‘Anyway, she won't be much longer.'
Soon the big lady would have a roof over her head. Admittedly, it was the roof of an old henhouse, but none the worse for that. Posy meant to turn that hen-house into a palace – or thereabouts.
She had not yet broken the news to Daff, her mother, that a bag lady was coming to live in the garden.
