The Junior Classics, Volume 6: Old-Fashioned Tales
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The Junior Classics, Volume 6: Old-Fashioned Tales
Children's literature
"That little man does me a great credit. He has only been fed for a
week, and is as fat already as a prize ox. What a dainty morsel he
will be! When do you dine to-day, in case I should have time to look
in upon you?"
On reaching home the giant immediately hung up Master No-book by the
hair of his head, on a prodigious hook in the larder, having first
taken some large lumps of nasty suet, forcing them down his throat to
make him become still fatter, and then stirring the fire, that he
might be almost melted with heat, to make his liver grow larger. On a
shelf quite near Master No-book perceived the bodies of six other
boys, whom he remembered to have seen fattening in the fairy
Do-nothing's garden, while he recollected how some of them had
rejoiced at the thoughts of leading a long, useless, idle life, with
no one to please but themselves.
The enormous cook now seized hold of Master No-book, brandishing her
knife with an aspect of horrible determination, intending to kill him,
while he took the trouble of screaming and kicking in the most
desperate manner, when the giant turned gravely round, and said that,
as pigs were considered a much greater dainty when whipped to death
than killed in any other way, he meant to see whether children might
not be improved by it also; therefore she might leave that great hog
of a boy till he had time to try the experiment, especially as his own
appetite would be improved by the exercise. This was a dreadful
prospect for the unhappy prisoner, but meantime it prolonged his life
a few hours, as he was immediately hung up in the larder and left to
himself. There, in torture of mind and body, like a fish upon a hook,
the wretched boy began at last to reflect seriously upon his former
ways, and to consider what a happy home he might have had, if he could
only have been satisfied with business and pleasure succeeding each
other, like day and night, while lessons might have come in as a
pleasant sauce to his play-hours, and his play-hours as a sauce to his
lessons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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