Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - "Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v14"

Peter B. Kyne - "The Long Chance"

Annie H. Ryder - "Hold Up Your Heads, Girls!"

John Lothrop Motley - "The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1579 80"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Junior Classics Volume 8

S >> Selected and arranged by William Patten >> The Junior Classics Volume 8




"It is the most dignified thing to come last!" they said to one
another. "The kings of the wood do not come till the whole company
is assembled."

But at last they came. All the leaves burst forth from the swollen
buds, and the Trees looked at one another and complimented one
another on their beauty. The Little Oak had grown ever so much. He
was very proud of it, and he thought that he had now the right to
join in the conversation. "Nothing has come yet of the Bear's Beech
Trees," he said jeeringly, at the same time glancing anxiously up
at the Old Oak, who used to give him one on the head.

The Old Oak heard what he said very plainly, and the other Trees
also; but they said nothing. Not one of them had forgotten what the
Bear had told them, and every morning when the sun came out they
peeped down to look for the Beeches. They were really a little
uneasy, but they were too proud to talk about it.

And one day the little shoots did at last burst forth from the
earth. The sun shone on them, and the rain fell on them, so it was
not long before they grew tall.

"Oh, how pretty they are!" said the Great Oak, and stooped his
crooked boughs still more, so that they could get a good view of
them. "You are welcome among us," said the Old Oak, and graciously
inclined his head to them. "You shall be my foster--children, and
be treated just as well as my own."

"Thanks," said the Little Beeches, and they said no more.

But the Little Oak could not bear the strange Trees. "It is
dreadful the way you shoot up into the air," he said in vexation.
"You are already half as tall as I am. But I beg you to take notice
that I am much older, and of good family besides."

The Beeches laughed with their little, tiny green leaves, but said
nothing.

"Shall I bend my branches a little aside so that the sun can shine
better on you?" the Old Tree asked politely.

"Many thanks," answered the Beeches. "We can grow very nicely in
the shade."

And the whole summer passed by, and another summer after that, and
still more summers. The Beeches went on growing, and at last quite
overtopped the Little Oak.

"Keep your leaves to yourself," cried the Oak; "you overshadow me,
and that is what I can't endure. I must have plenty of sunshine.
Take your leaves away or I perish."

The Beeches only laughed and went on growing. At last they closed
together over the Little Oak's head, and then he died. "That was a
horrid thing to do," a great Oak called out, and shook his boughs
in terror.

But the Old Oak took his foster-children under his protection. "It
serves him right," he said. "He is paid out for his boasting. I say
it, though he is my own flesh and blood. But now you must behave
yourselves, Little Beeches, or I will give you a clout on the
head."

Years went by, and the Beeches went on growing, and they grew
till they were tall young Trees, which reached up among the
branches of the Old Oak.

"You begin to be rather pushing," the Old Tree said. "You should
try to grow a little broader, and stop this shooting up into the
air. Just see where your branches are soaring. Bend them properly,
as you see us do. How will you be able to hold out when a regular
storm comes? I assure you the Wind gives one's head a good shaking.
My old boughs have creaked many a time; and what do you think will
become of the flimsy finery that you stick up in the air?"

"Every one has his own manner of growth, and we have ours,"
answered the young Beeches. "This is the way it's done where we
come from, and we are perhaps as good as you are."

"That is not a polite way of speaking to an old Tree with moss on
his boughs," said the Oak. "I begin to repent that I was so kind to
you. If you have a spark of honourable feeling alive in you, be
good enough to move your leaves a little to one side. There have
been scarcely any buds on my lowest branches this year, you
overshadow me so."

"I don't quite understand how that concerns us," answered the
Beeches. "Every one has quite enough to do to look after himself.
If he is equal to his work, and has luck, it turns out well for
him; if not, he must be prepared to go to the wall. That is the way
of the world."

Then the Oak's lowest branch died, and he began to be seriously
alarmed. "You are pretty things," he said, "if this is the way you
reward me for my hospitality. When you were little I let you grow
at my feet, and sheltered you against the storm, I let the sun
shine on you as much as ever he would, and I treated you as if you
were my own children. And in return for all this you stifle me."

"Stuff and nonsense!" said the Beeches. So they put forth flowers
and fruit, and when the fruit was ripe the Wind shook the boughs
and scattered it round far and wide.

"You are quick people like me," said the Wind. "I like you for it,
and am glad to do you a good turn." And the Fox rolled on the
ground at the foot of the Beech Trees and got his fur full of the
prickly fruits, and ran with them far out into the country. The
Bear did the same, and grinned into the bargain at the Old Oak
while he lay and rested in the shadow of the Beeches. The Field
Mouse was beside himself with joy over his new food, and thought
that Beech nuts tasted much nicer than acorns. All round new little
Beech Trees shot up, which grew just as fast as their parents, and
looked as green and as happy as if they did not know what an uneasy
conscience was.

But the Old Oak gazed sadly out over the wood. The light-green
Beech leaves were peeping out everywhere, and the Oaks were sighing
and bewailing their distress to one another. "They are taking our
strength out of us," they said, and shook as much as the Beeches
around would let them. "The land is ours no longer." One bough died
after another, and the Storm broke them off and cast them on the
ground. The Old Oak had now only a few leaves left at the very top.
"The end is near," he said gravely.

By this time there were many more human beings in the land than
there were before, and they made haste to hew down the Oaks while
there were still some remaining.

"Oak timber is better than Beech timber," they said.

"At last we get a little appreciation," said the old Oak, "but we
have to pay for it with our lives."

Then he said to the Beech Trees,--"What was I thinking of when I
helped you on in your young days? What an old stupid I was! Before
that, we Oak Trees were lords in the land; and now every year I see
my brothers around me perishing in the fight against you. It will
soon be all over with me, and not one of my acorns has sprouted
under your shade. But before I die I should like to know the name
you give to such conduct."

"That will not take long to say, old friend," answered the Beeches.
"We call it _competition,_ and that is not any discovery of
our own. It is competition which rules the world."

"I do not know these foreign words of yours," said the Oak. "I call
it mean ingratitude." And then he died.



THE OAK AND THE SNAIL

By Mrs. Alfred Gatty

The trunk of the Oak Tree in the corner of the timber yard lay
groaning under the plank, which a party of children had thrown
across him to play see-saw upon.

Not that the plank was so heavy, even with two or three little ones
sitting on each end, nor that the Oak was too weak to hold it
up--though, of course, the pressure was pretty strong just at the
centre, where the plank balanced. But it was such a use to be put
to!

The other half of the Tree had been cut into beautiful even planks,
some time before, but this was the root end, and his time had not
yet come, and he was getting impatient.

"Here we go up, up, up!" cried the children, as the plank rose into
the sky on one side. "I shall catch the tree-tops--no! the church
steeple--no! the stars."

Or, "Here we go down, down, down!" cried the others. "Safe and snug
on the ground--no! right through the world--no! out at the other
side. Ah! steady there, stupid old stump!" This was because the
plank had swerved, not the Tree.

And so the game went on; for the ups and downs came in turns, and
the children shrieked with delight, and the poor Tree groaned
loudly all the time.

"And I am to sit here; and bear not only their weight but their
blame, and be called stupid and be told to keep steady, when it is
they who are giddy and can't be depended upon; and to be contented,
while they do nothing but play pranks and enjoy themselves," said
he; but he said it to himself, for he did not know which to
complain to--the children or the plank. As he groaned, however, he
thought of the time when he was king of the little wood, where he
had grown up from the acorn days of his babyhood, and it broke his
heart to be so insignificant now.

[Illustration: THEY LEARNT FROM THEIR FATHER TO HUNT
THE STAG IN HIS COVERT
_From the painting by John Hassall_]

"Why have they not cut me into planks like the rest?" continued he,
angrily. "I might have led the see-saw myself then, as this fellow
does, who leans so heavily on my back, without a thought that I am
as good or better than himself. Why have they not given me the
chance of enjoying myself like these others--up in the sky at one
end, down on the ground at the other, full of energy and life? The
whole timber yard, but myself, has a chance. Position and honour,
as well as pleasure, are for everybody except me. But I am to stick
in a corner merely for others to steady themselves upon--unthought
of or despised, made a tool of--Miserable me!"

Now this groaning was so dreadful, it woke the large Garden Snail
in the grass hard by, whose custom it was to come out from his
haunt under the timber-yard wall every morning at sunrise, and
crawl round and round the Oak trunk to see the world come to life,
leaving a slimy track behind him on the bark wherever he moved. It
was his constitutional stroll, and he had continued it all the
season, pursuing his morning reflections without interruption, and
taking his nap in the grass afterwards, as regularly as the day
came round.

But napping through such lamentation was impossible, and
accordingly he once more began to crawl up the side of the Oak
trunk, his head turning now to one side, now to the other, his
horns extended to the utmost, that, if possible, he might see what
was the matter.

But he could not make out, though he kept all his eyes open: so
by-and-by he made the inquiry of his old friend the Tree.

"What is the matter, do you ask?" groaned the Oak more heavily than
ever--"you who can change your position and act independently when
you wish; you who are _not_ left a useless log as I am, the
scorn and sport of my own kith and kin? Yes, the very planks who
balance themselves on my body, and mock me by their activity, have
probably come from my own side, and once hung on me as branches,
drinking in life from the life I gave. Oh miserable me! miserable,
despised, useless!"

Now there may be plenty of animals to be found with more brilliant
abilities and livelier imagination than the Snail, but for gravity
of demeanour and calmness of nerve who is his equal? And if a sound
judgment be not behind such outward signs, there is no faith to be
put in faces!

Accordingly, Sir Helix Hortensis--so let us call him, for that is
his scientific name--made no answer at first to the wailings of the
Oak. Three times he crawled round it, leaving three fresh traces of
his transit, before he spoke, his horns turning hither and thither
as those wonderful eyes at the end strove to take in the full state
of the case. And his are not the eyes, you know, which waste their
energies in scatter-brained staring. He keeps them cool in their
cases till there is something to be looked at, and then turns them
inside out to do their work.

And thus he looked, and he looked, and he looked, while the
children went on shouting, and the plank went on see-sawing, and
the Tree went on groaning; and as he looked, he considered.

"Have you anything to say?" at last inquired the Oak, who had had
long experience of Sir Helix's wisdom.

"I have," answered the Snail. "You don't know your own value,
that's all."

"Ask the see-sawers my value!" exclaimed the prostrate Tree,
bitterly. "One up at the stars, another beyond the world! What am
_I_ doing meanwhile?"

"Holding them both up, which is more than they can do for
themselves," muttered the Snail, turning round to go back to the
grass.

"But--but--stop a moment, dear Sir Helix; the see-sawers don't
think that," argued the Tree.

"They're all light-minded together, and don't think," sneered the
Snail. "Up in the sky one minute, down in the dust the next. Never
you mind that. Everybody can't play at high jinks with comfort,
luckily for the rest of the world. Sit fast, do your duty, and have
faith. While they are going flightily up and down, your steady
balance is the saving of both."



THE STORY OF A STONE

By David Starr Jordan

Once on a time, a great many years ago, so many years that if your
father should give you a dollar for every year you could buy up the
whole town you live in and have enough left to pay the National
Debt; in those old days when the great Northwest consisted only of
a few hills, ragged and barren, and full of copper and quartz; in
the days when the Northern Ocean washed the crest of Mount
Washington and wrote its name upon the Pictured Rocks, and the tide
of the Pacific swept over Plymouth Rock and surged up against
Bunker Hill; when the Gulf of Mexico rolled its warm and shallow
waters as far north as Escanaba and Eau Claire; in fact, an
immensely long time ago--there lived somewhere in Oconto County,
Wisconsin, a little jelly-fish. It was a curious creature, about
the shape of half an apple, and the size of a cat's thimble, and it
floated around in the water and ate little things and opened and
shut its umbrella, pretty much as jelly-fishes do in the ocean now.

It had a great many little feelers that hung down all around like
so many mites of snakes, and so it was named Medusa, after that
lady in the old times who wore snakes instead of hair, and who felt
so badly because she couldn't do them up. Well, our little Medusa
floated around and opened and shut her umbrella for a long time--a
month, or a year, perhaps--we don't know how long. Then, one
morning, down among the sea-weeds, she laid a whole lot of tiny
eggs, transparent as crab-apple jelly and much smaller than a
dew-drop on the end of a pine-leaf. Now she leaves the scene, and
our story henceforth concerns only one of these eggs.

Well, one day, the sun shone down into the water--the same sun that
shines through your window now--and a little fellow whom we will
call Favosites, because that was his name, woke up inside of the
egg and came out into the great world. He was only a wee bit of
floating jelly, shaped like a cartridge pointed at both ends. He
had at his sides an immense number of little paddles that went
flapping, flapping all the time, keeping him constantly in motion,
whether the little fellow wanted to go or not. So he kept scudding
along in the water, dodging from right to left, to avoid the
ungainly creatures that wanted to eat him. There were crabs and
clams, of a fashion that neither you nor I will ever see alive.
There were huge animals with great eyes, savage jaws and long
feelers, that sat in the end of a long, round shell and glowered at
him, and smaller ones of the same kind that looked like lobsters in
a dinner-horn.

But none of these got the little fellow, else I should not have any
story to tell.

At last, having paddled about long enough, he thought of settling
in life. So he looked around until he found a flat bit of shell
that just suited him, when he sat down upon it, and grew fast, like
old Holger Danske, in the Danish myth. Only, unlike Holger, he
didn't go to sleep, but proceeded to make himself at home. So he
made an opening in his upper side, and rigged for himself a mouth
and a stomach, and put a whole row of feelers out, and began
catching little worms and floating eggs and bits of jelly and bits
of lime,--everything he could get,--and cramming them into his
little stomach.

He had a great many curious ways, but the funniest of all was what
he did with the bits of lime. He kept taking them in and tried to
wall himself up inside with them, as a person would stone a well or
as though a man should swallow pebbles and stow them away in his
feet and all around under the skin, till he had filled himself
full.

But little Favosites became lonesome all alone on the bottom of
that old ocean, among so many outlandish neighbors; and so, one
night, when he was fast asleep, and dreaming as only a coral animal
can dream, there sprouted out of his side, where his sixth rib
would have been if he had had so many, another little Favosites,
who very soon began to eat worms and wall himself up as if for dear
life. Then, from these two another and another little bud came out,
and another and another little Favosites was formed, and they all
kept growing up higher and higher, and cramming themselves fuller
and fuller of limestone, till at last there were so many of them,
and they were so crowded together, that there wasn't room for them
to grow round; so they had to grow six-sided, like the cells in a
honeycomb.

Once in a while, some one in the company would get mad because the
others got all of the lime, or would feel uneasy at sitting still
so long and swallowing stones, and would secede from the little
union, without as much as saying "Good-bye," and would sail around
like the old Medusa, and would lay more eggs, which would hatch out
into more Favosites.

Well, the old ones died or swam away or were walled up, and new
ones filled their places, and the colony thrived for a long time,
and had accumulated quite a stock of lime. But, one day, there came
a freshet in the Menomonee River, and piles of dirt and sand and
ground-up iron ore were brought down, and all the little Favosites'
mouths were filled with it. They didn't like the taste of iron, so
they all died; but we know that their house was not spoiled, for we
have it here. So the rock-house they were making was tumbled about
in the dirt, and the rolling pebbles knocked the corners off, and
the mud worked its way into the cracks and destroyed its beautiful
whiteness.

There it lay for ages, till the earth gave a great, long heave,
that raised the rest of Wisconsin out of the ocean, and the mud
around our Favosites' house packed and dried into hard rock and
closed it in; and so it became part of the dry land. There it lay,
imbedded in the rock for centuries and centuries.

Then, the time of the first fishes came, and the other animals
looked on them in awe and wonder as the Indians eyed Columbus. They
were like the gar-pike in our Western rivers, only much larger,--as
big as a stove-pipe,--and with a crust as hard as a turtle's shell.
Then there came sharks, of strange forms, savage and ferocious,
with teeth like bowie-knives. But the time of the old fishes came
and went, and many more times came and went, but still Favosites
lay in the ground.

Then came the long, hot, wet summer, when the mists hung over the
earth so thick that you might almost have cut them into chunks with
a knife, like a loaf of gingerbread; and great ferns and rushes,
big as an oak and tall as a steeple, grew over the land. Huge
reptiles with jaws like a front door, and teeth like cross-cut
saws, and little reptiles with wings like bats, crawled and swam
and flew.

But the ferns died, and the reptiles died, and the rush-trees fell
into the swamps, and the Mississippi, now become quite a river,
covered them up, and they were packed away under great layers of
clay and sand, till at last they were turned into coal, and wept
bitter tears of petroleum. But all the while Favosites lay in the
rock at Oconto.

Then the mists cleared up and the sun shone and the grass began to
grow, and strange animals began to come and feed upon it. They were
funny little zebra horses, no bigger than a Newfoundland dog, and
great hairy elephants, and hogs with noses so long they could sit
on their hind legs and root, and lots of still stranger creatures
that no man ever saw alive. But still Favosites lay in the ground.

So the long, long summer passed by, and the autumn, and the Indian
summer; and at last the great winter came, and it snowed and
snowed, and it was so cold that the snow wasn't off by the Fourth
of July; and then it snowed and snowed till the snow never went off
at all; and then it got so cold that it snowed all the time, till
the snow covered all the animals, and then the trees, and then the
mountains. Then it would thaw a little, and streams of water would
run over the snow; then it would freeze again, and pack it into
solid ice. Still it went on, snowing and thawing and freezing till
the ice was a mile deep over Wisconsin, and the whole United States
was one great skating rink.

So it kept on for about a million years, until once when the spring
came and the south winds blew, it began to thaw up. Then the ice
came sliding down from the mountains and hills, tearing up rocks
little and big, from the size of a chip to the size of a meeting
house, crushing forests as you would crush an egg-shell, and wiping
out rivers as you would wipe out a chalk-mark. So it came pushing,
thundering, grinding along slowly enough, but with tremendous
force, this mile-deep glacier, like an immense plow drawn by a
million oxen.

So the ice plowed across Oconto County, and little Favosites was
rooted out from the quiet place where he had lain so long; but, by
good fortune, he happened to slip into a crevice in the ice, where
he wasn't much crowded, else he would have been ground to powder,
as most of his relatives were, and I shouldn't have had this story
to tell.

Well, the ice slid along, melting all the while, and making great
torrents of water which, as they swept onward, covered land with
clay and pebbles, till at last it came to a great swamp, overgrown
with tamarac and cedar. Here it stopped and melted, and all the
rocks and stones and dirt it had carried with it, little Favosites
and all, were dumped into one great heap.

Ages after, a farmer in Grand Chote, Michigan, plowing up his
clover field, to sow for winter wheat, picked up a curious bit of
"petrified honeycomb," and gave it to the schoolboys to take to
their teacher, to hear what he would say about it. And now you have
read what he said.



HOW THE STONE-AGE CHILDREN PLAYED

By Charles C. Abbott

Not long since I wandered along a pretty brook that rippled through
a narrow valley. I was on the lookout for whatever birds might be
wandering that way, but saw nothing of special interest. So, to
while away the time, I commenced geologizing; and, as I plodded
along my lonely way, I saw everywhere traces of an older time, when
the sparkling rivulet that now only harbors pretty salamanders was
a deep creek, tenanted by many of our larger fishes.

How fast the earth from the valley's slopes may have been loosened
by frost and washed by freshets, and carried down to fill up the
old bed of the stream, we will not stop to enquire; for older
traces of this older time were also met with here. As I turned over
the loose earth by the brook-side, and gathered here and there a
pretty pebble, I chanced upon a little arrow-point.

Whoever has made a collection, be it of postage stamps or birds'
eggs, knows full well how securing one coveted specimen but
increases eagerness for others; and so it was with me that pleasant
afternoon. Just one pretty arrow-point cured me of my laziness,
banished every trace of fatigue, and filled me with the interest of
eager search; and I dug and sifted and washed the sandy soil for
yards along the brook-side, until I had gathered at least a score
of curious relics of the long-departed red men, or rather of the
games and sports and pastimes of the red men's hardy and active
children.

For centuries before Columbus discovered San Salvador, the red men
(or Indians as they are usually called) roamed over all the great
continent of North America, and, having no knowledge of iron as a
metal, they were forced to make of stone or bone all their weapons,
hunting and household implements. From this fact they are called,
when referring to those early times, a stone-age people, and so, of
course, the boys and girls of that period were stone-age children.

But it is not to be supposed that because the children of savages
they were altogether unlike the youngsters of to-day. In one
respect, at least, they were quite the same--they were very fond of
play.

Their play, however, was not like the games of to-day. We might,
perhaps, call the principal game of the boys "Playing Man," for the
little stone implements that were their toys were only miniatures
of the great stone axes and long spear-points of their fathers.

In one particular these old-time children were really in advance of
the youngsters of to-day; they not only did, in play, what their
parents did in earnest, but they realized, in part, the results of
their playful labor. A good old Moravian missionary who labored
hard to convert these Indians to Christianity, says: "Little boys
are frequently seen wading in shallow brooks, shooting small fishes
with their bows and arrows." Going-a-fishing, then, as now, was
good fun; but to shoot fishes with a bow and arrow is not an easy
thing to do, and this is one way these stone-age children played,
and played to better advantage than most of my young-readers can.
Among the stone-age children's toys that I gathered that afternoon
was a very pretty stone hatchet, very carefully shaped, and still
quite sharp. It has been worked out from a porphyry pebble, and in
every way, except size, is the same as hundreds that are still to
be found lying about the fields.