Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5Sylvester, Charles Herbert
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Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5
Sylvester, Charles Herbert
Children's literature; Literature -- Collections
I fell into a highroad, for so I took it to be, though it served to the
inhabitants only as a footpath through a field of barley. Here I walked
on for some time, but could see little on either side, it being now near
harvest, and the corn rising at least forty foot. I was an hour walking
to the end of this field, which was fenced in with a hedge of at least
one hundred and twenty foot high, and the trees so lofty that I could
make no computation of their altitude. There was a stile to pass from
this field into the next. It had four steps, and a stone to cross over
when you came to the uppermost. It was impossible for me to climb this
stile, because every step was six foot high, and the upper stone above
twenty.
I was endeavoring to find some gap in the hedge, when I discovered one
of the inhabitants in the next field, advancing toward the stile, of the
same size with him whom I saw in the sea pursuing our boat. He appeared
as tall as an ordinary spire steeple, and took about ten yards at every
stride, as near as I could guess. I was struck with the utmost fear and
astonishment, and ran to hide myself in the corn, from whence I saw him
at the top of the stile, looking back into the next field on the right
hand, and heard him call in a voice many degrees louder than a
speaking-trumpet; but the noise was so high in the air that at first I
certainly thought it was thunder. Whereupon seven monsters, like
himself, came toward him with reaping hooks in their hands, each hook
about the largeness of six scythes. These people were not so well clad
as the first, whose servants or laborers they seemed to be; for, upon
some words he spoke, they went to reap the corn in the field where I
lay.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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