Good Stories for Great Holidays: Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the Children's Own Reading — John Shaqi
Good Stories for Great Holidays: Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the Children's Own ReadingOlcott, Frances Jenkins
General
Good Stories for Great Holidays: Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the Children's Own Reading
Olcott, Frances Jenkins
Children's literature; Holidays; Short stories; Storytelling
At another time, discovering on the scales in the morning a weight with
which he had weighed out a package of tea for a woman the night before,
he saw that he had given her too little for her money. He weighed out
what was due, and carried it to her, much to the surprise of the woman,
who had not known that she was short in the amount of her purchase.
Innumerable incidents of this sort are related of Lincoln, and we should
not have space to tell of the alertness with which he sprang to protect
defenseless women from insult, or feeble children from tyranny; for in
the rude community in which he lived, the rights of the defenseless were
not always respected as they should have been. There were bullies then,
as now.
A STRANGER AT FIVE-POINTS
(ADAPTED)
One afternoon in February, 1860, when the Sunday School of the
Five-Point House of Industry in New York was assembled, the teacher
saw a most remarkable man enter the room and take his place among the
others. This stranger was tall, his frame was gaunt and sinewy, his head
powerful, with determined features overcast by a gentle melancholy.
He listened with fixed attention to the exercises. His face expressed
such genuine interest that the teacher, approaching him, suggested that
he might have something to say to the children.
The stranger accepted the invitation with evident pleasure. Coming
forward, he began to speak and at once fascinated every child in the
room. His language was beautiful yet simple, his tones were musical, and
he spoke with deep feeling.
The faces of the boys and girls drooped sadly as he uttered warnings,
and then brightened with joy as he spoke cheerful words of promise. Once
or twice he tried to close his remarks, but the children shouted: “Go
on! Oh! do go on!” and he was forced to continue.
At last he finished his talk and was leaving the room quietly when the
teacher begged to know his name.
“Abra'm Lincoln, of Illinois,” was the modest response.
A SOLOMON COME TO JUDGMENT
BY CHARLES W. MOORES
Lincoln's practical sense and his understanding of human nature enabled
him to save the life of the son of his old Clary's Grove friend, Jack
Armstrong, who was on trial for murder. Lincoln, learning of it, went
to the old mother who had been kind to him in the days of his boyhood
poverty, and promised her that he would get her boy free.
The witnesses were sure that Armstrong was guilty, and one of them
declared that he had seen the fatal blow struck. It was late at night,
he said, and the light of the full moon had made it possible for him to
see the crime committed. Lincoln, on cross-examination, asked him only
questions enough to make the jury see that it was the full moon that
made it possible for the witness to see what occurred; got him to say
two or three times that he was sure of it, and seemed to give up any
further effort to save the boy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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