St Nicholas Volume 14

Author : Mary Mapes Dodge
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781331050872
Total Pages : 542 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (58 download)

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Download or read book St. Nicholas, Vol. 22 written by Mary Mapes Dodge and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-09 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from St. Nicholas, Vol. 22: An Illustrated Magazine for Young Folks On a certain June morning in the year 1806, when the sunshine flooded all things, and every nightingale in France seemed practising for the post of court singer, a boy lay at the foot of one of the great chestnuts in the park of St. Cloud. He was small, disreputable-looking, and dilapidated, - a tramp, and a ragged little tramp at that; but his eye was bright and snappy; his tangled hair, crowned with the wreck of a red liberty-cap, was thick and golden; and his face, though it bore the stamp of poverty as it bore its crust of grime, had that careless, happy-go-lucky air that marks the street-boy of any great city. His restless eyes took in everything the noble park had to offer. He was evidently on the lookout for some place or some person. But, tired with his ten-mile tramp, and overpowered by the glorious solitude of all out-of-doors - burdened, also, with the weight of the important secret that had led him so far from his dingy home in the narrow Street of the Washerwomen, he had flung himself down at the foot of the great chestnut to talk it all over with himself for want of a listening comrade. "My faith!" he said, as he closed one eye and squinted the other along the fat tree-trunk, and into the over-arching branches, "but this is n't the Court of the Miracles now, nor yet the Street of the Washerwomen, is it? What big trees! What a lot of room! Lonesome, though, I think, when the night comes down; even the Street of the Washerwomen would be better than this, for there are plenty of people there, - more than a plenty sometimes, especially when that pig of a Pierre comes shoving across the street to tease Babette and set my two fists a-going! But I like people. There's more to see in a crowd of people than in a crowd of trees - more to do, too. But here's where the Little Corporal's big house is, somewhere among these trees. I wonder where? I saw a pile of buildings on the hill farther along, as I came up here. Perhaps I can find the Emperor there. I must; I must n't say what I came for to any one else. I wonder how one talks to an emperor? Must I say 'Citizen Emperor, ' or 'Citizen Little Corporal, ' or 'Citizen' what? I must find out before I get up to his house. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.