The Junior Classics, Volume 8: Animal and Nature Stories
General
The Junior Classics, Volume 8: Animal and Nature Stories
Children's literature
The fish-hooks found in Norway have been thought to be best adapted
for, and really used in, capturing cod-fish in salt water and perch
and pike in inland lakes. The broken hooks I found were fully as
large; and so the little brook that now ripples down the valley,
when a large stream, must have had a good many big fishes in it, or
the stone-age fishermen would not have brought their fishing-hooks,
and have lost them, along this remnant of a larger stream.
But it must not be supposed that only children in this by-gone era
did the fishing for their tribe. Just as the men captured the
larger game, so they took the bigger fishes; but it is scarcely
probable that the boys who waded the little brooks with bows and
arrows would remain content with that, and, long before they were
men, doubtless they were adepts in catching the more valuable
fishes that abounded, in Indian times, in all our rivers.
So, fishing, I think, was another way in which the stone-age
children played.
THE MIST
By Carl Ewald
The sun had just gone down.
The frog was croaking his "good-night," which lasted so long that
there seemed no end to it. The bee was creeping into its hive, and
little children were crying because they had to go to bed. The
flower was closing up its petals and bowing its head; the bird was
tucking its bill under its wing; and the stag was laying himself
down to rest in the tall, soft grass in the glade of the wood.
From the village church the bells were ringing for sunset, and when
that was over the old clerk went home. On his way he had a little
chat or two with the people who were out for an evening stroll, or
were standing before their gate and smoking a pipe till they bade
him good-night and shut the door.
Then it grew quite quiet, and the darkness fell. There was a light
in the parson's house, and there was one also in the doctor's. But
the farmers' houses were dark, because in summer-time the farmers
get up so early that they must go early to bed.
And then the stars began to twinkle, and the moon crept higher and
higher up the sky. Down in the village a dog was barking. But it
must have been barking in a dream, for there was nothing to bark
at.
"Is there anybody there?" asked the Mist.
But nobody answered, for nobody was there. So the Mist issued forth
in her bright, airy robes. She went dancing over the meadows, up
and down, to and fro. Then she lay quite still for a moment, and
then she took to dancing again. Out over the lake she skipped and
deep into the wood, where she threw her long, damp arms round the
trunks of the trees.
"Who are you, my friend?" asked the Night-Violet [Footnote: An
inconspicuous flower which in Denmark is very fragrant in the
evening, the "night-smelling rocket" (_Hesperis triatto_).],
who stood there giving forth fragrance just to please herself.
The Mist did not answer, but went on dancing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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