قراءة كتاب The Nursery, April 1881, Vol. XXIX A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
The Nursery, April 1881, Vol. XXIX A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers
tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}img"/>
KINGS AND QUEENS.
TOMMY.
The earliest robin sing;
I wished, what never will come true,
That I could be a king;
For, if I only were a king,
I know what I would do:
I'd have plum-cake, instead of bread,
To eat the whole year through;
Great heaps of oranges would be
Upon my palace-floors,
And fountains full of lemonade
Spout up beside its doors.
FRED, GRACIE, HARRY, ISABEL.
You're such a greedy thing!
We're glad you are not over us:
You should not be our king.
JESSIE.
A new dress every day;
No princess in a fairy-tale
Would have such fine array;
With golden lace and glittering gems
My robes my maids would deck,
And diamonds large as pigeons' eggs
Would hang about my neck.
FRED, GRACIE, HARRY, ISABEL.
How fond of being seen!
We're glad you are not over us:
You should not be our queen.
KARL.
In every thing my way;
My servants would stand waiting round,
My wishes to obey;
And I would do just what I pleased,
And say just what I chose,
And not a soul in all the land
Would dare my will oppose.
FRED, GRACIE, HARRY, ISABEL.
What troubles you would bring!
We want no tyrant over us;
You should not be our king.
LILIAN.
I would put on my crown,
And through the country everywhere
Go walking up and down;
And all the old folks, sick, and poor,
I would have warmed and fed,
And every houseless little child
Should home with me be led;
And I would love them all, and try
To do the best I could
To make the sorry people glad,
The naughty people good.
FRED, GRACIE, HARRY, ISABEL.
That ever yet was seen;
And, if we had a queen at all,
Then you should be our queen.
DRAWING-LESSON.VOL. XXIX.—NO. 4.
THE BIRD WHO HAS NO NEST.
HIS is the cuckoo. She and her mate have no home of their own; but that does not seem to trouble them. They peep here and there among the leaves, until they find the nest of some other bird,—a lark, perhaps, or a thrush, or a yellow-hammer; and, if the owner of the nest is away, Mrs. Cuckoo leaves within it a small egg.
There are some birds that can take care of themselves almost as soon as they are born; but Mrs. Cuckoo never leaves her eggs in their nests. Oh, no! she chooses a nest in which the young birds are well cared for by their mothers, and fed with food on which the young cuckoos thrive best.
Why she is too idle to build her own nest, no one knows. Some people say it is because she stays so short a time in the same country, that her young ones would not get strong enough to fly away with her, if she waited to build her nest. Others think it is because she is such a great eater, that she cannot spend time to find food for her children.
But the kind foster-mothers, the larks and the thrushes, care for the egg that the cuckoo leaves in their houses, although, if any other bird leaves one, they will take no care of it at all, but roll it out upon the ground.
The Scotch word for cuckoo, gowk, means, also, a foolish person. But I think they ought rather to have named it a wicked person; for the young cuckoo is so ungrateful and selfish, that he often gets one of the other little birds on his back, and then, climbing to the top of the nest, throws it over the edge. These are the English cuckoos of which I have been telling you. I am glad to say that their American cousins take care of their own children.
A SHRINE.
N countries where the Roman-Catholic religion prevails, a shrine signifies a box or case containing an image of the Virgin Mary, or some relics regarded as sacred.
This box is attached to a stone pillar or other fixed monument, and thus marks a place at which the pious Catholics kneel to offer up their prayers.
In Italy and Spain shrines are very common, not only in the churches, but at the roadsides. The picture shows us one with a little girl holding a bunch of flowers in front of the sacred image which she sees in it.
In this country they are to be seen only in churches; but we often speak of any hallowed place as a shrine.
