Farm Life Readers (Volume 4)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1913. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... THE WONDERFUL WORLD Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World, With the wonderful water round you curled, And the wonderful grass upon your breast, -- World, you are beautifully drest. The wonderful air is over me, And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree; It walks on the water, and whirls the mills, And talks to itself on the top of the hills. You, friendly Earth! how far do you go With the wheat fields that nod and the rivers that flow, With cities and gardens, and cliffs and isles, And people upon you for thousands of miles? Ah, you are so great, and I am so small, I tremble to think of you, World, at all; And yet, when I said my prayers to-day, A whisper within me seemed to say-- You are more than the Earth, though you are such a dot; You can love and think, and the Earth can not! --William Brighty Rands. HOW MARY EMILY WAKED UP Do you believe in fairies? If not, just pass this story and go on to the next. I, for one, have still a place in my heart for the radiant little beings that we call good fairies, and I have faith that they are about us still, helping us whenever we open the doors and windows of our lives wide enough to let them in. Yes, I believe in good fairies, and that is the reason I was so glad to hear this fairy story the other day from a friend of mine. Mary Emily was a little country girl. She lived on an old plantation in southern Georgia with her parents, who were very poor. Like most little girls in southern Georgia, Mary Emily was blessed with a number of brothers and sisters. They were all younger than herself except one big brother who was away at an agricultural college. I must acknowledge to you that before the fairies came Mary Emily did not count these brothers and sisters as blessings. She rather thought of them as nuisances, ...