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3b9918c
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I have often thought that if the people who write books for children knew a little more it would be better. I shall not tell you anything about us except what I should like to know about if I was reading the story and you were writing it. Albert's uncle says I ought to have put this in the preface, but I never read prefaces, and it is not much good writing things just for people to skip. I wonder other authors have never thought of this.
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E. Nesbit |
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7977561
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How many miles to Babylon? Three score and ten! Can I get there by candle light? Yes, and back again!
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inspirational
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E. Nesbit |
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d66a216
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even the most careful persons make mistakes sometimes--and she must have taken the wrong omnibus, or this story could never have happened, and where should we all have been then?
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E. Nesbit |
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53e83d1
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Q. Where shall we go? A. To the railway.
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E. Nesbit |
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fb0bbe1
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over smooth,
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E. Nesbit |
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5de8ead
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He said that his eyes were red because he had a cold.
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E. Nesbit |
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84f3a17
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badly, in a sort of way, because you hadn't the sense to wish for what was good for you. But this charm's quite different. I haven't GOT to do this for you, it's just my own generous
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E. Nesbit |
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453da84
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feathers, and a shield and a lance and a sword. His armor and his weapons were all, I am almost sure, of quite different periods. The shield was thirteenth century, while the sword was of the pattern used in the Peninsular War. The cuirass was of the time of Charles I., and the helmet dated from the Second Crusade. The arms on the shield were very grand--three red running lions on a blue ground. The tents were of the latest brand approved o..
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E. Nesbit |
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d680c49
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With gloomy face he picked it up And took it to his Mother, Though even he could not suppose That she could make another; For those who perished on the line He did not seem to care, His engine being more to him Than all the people there. And now you see the reason why Our Peter has been ill: He soothes his soul with pigeon-pie His gnawing grief to kill. He wraps himself in blankets warm And sleeps in bed till late, Determined thus to overco..
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E. Nesbit |
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4860e44
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more.
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E. Nesbit |
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0a360f6
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Perhaps she did more than anyone else, for she slapped the King and put him to bed without his tea,
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E. Nesbit |
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2a64128
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When the next Saturday came around everyone was a little nervous, but the Red Dragon was pretty quiet that day and only ate an Orphanage.
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E. Nesbit |
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b8bddec
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blossom
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E. Nesbit |
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laburnum.
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E. Nesbit |
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8e392b5
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it is wrong to be angry with people for not being so clever as you are yourself. It is not always their faults.
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E. Nesbit |
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4f8b551
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One day Peter was going down to the village to get buns to celebrate the sensibleness of the Editor of the Children's Globe, when he met the Station Master. Peter felt very uncomfortable, for he had now had time to think over the affair of the coal-mine. He did not like to say "Good morning" to the Station Master, as you usually do to anyone you meet on a lonely road, because he had a hot feeling, which spread even to his ears, that the Sta..
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E. Nesbit |
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he said:-- "I don't want you to be polite to me if you don't know me when you see me." "Eh?" said the Station Master. "I thought perhaps you didn't know it was me that took the coals," Peter went on, "when you said 'Good morning.' But it was, and I'm sorry. There." "Why," said the Station Master, "I wasn't thinking anything at all about the precious coals. Let bygones be bygones. And where were you off to in such a hurry?"
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E. Nesbit |
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dacd5b1
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Well, you're to stay here and be my little boy till we find out where father is. We shall let the police know. They're sure to find him." "The pleece!" Dickie cried in horror. "Why, father, 'e ain't done nothing." "No, no, of course not," said the lady in a hurry; "but the police know all sorts of things--about where people are, I know, and what they're doing--even when they haven't done anything." "The pleece knows a jolly sight too much,"..
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E. Nesbit |
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3a70744
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Peter was not on the railings either, as usual. He was standing in front of them in an attitude like that of a show-man showing off the animals in a menagerie, or of the kind clergyman when he points with a wand at the 'Scenes from Palestine,' when there is a magic-lantern and he is explaining it.
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E. Nesbit |
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minutes,
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E. Nesbit |
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this dire emergency, to meet only the beautiful eyes of perfect strangers, instead of the merry, friendly, commonplace, twinkling, jolly little eyes of its own brothers and sisters. "This is most truly awful," said Cyril when he had tried to lift up the Lamb, and the Lamb had scratched like a cat and bellowed like a bull. "We've got to make friends with him! I can't carry him home screaming like that. Fancy having to make friends with our o..
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E. Nesbit |
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67f9616
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Roberta was the eldest. Of course, Mothers never have favourites, but if their Mother HAD had a favourite, it might have been Roberta. Next came Peter, who wished to be an Engineer when he grew up; and the youngest was Phyllis, who meant extremely well.
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E. Nesbit |
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436851a
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even the most careful persons make mistakes sometimes--and she must have taken the wrong omnibus, or this story could never have happened, and where should we all have been then? This shows you that even mistakes are sometimes valuable, so do not be hard on grown-up people if they are wrong sometimes. You know after all, it hardly ever happens.
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E. Nesbit |
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63c8e9a
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no, this was certainly not Streatham Common. The wrong omnibus had brought them to a strange village--the neatest, sweetest, reddest, greenest, cleanest, prettiest village in the world.
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E. Nesbit |
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cf9b5a2
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THE TOP PART OF PRIDMORE TURNED INTO PAINTED IRON AND GLASS. "Oh, my poor child," said the King, "your maid has turned into an Automatic Machine."
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E. Nesbit |
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My boy, you've been like a son to me, but now it's time you got married and had sons of your own. Is there any girl you'd like to marry?' 'No,' said Sep, 'I never did care much for girls.' The old lord laughed.
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E. Nesbit |
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b5b42ec
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All three had been TAUGHT French at school. How deeply they now wished that they had LEARNED it!
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E. Nesbit |
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cf109dc
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Trees are all different, as you know, and I am sure some tiresome person must have told you that there are no two blades of grass exactly alike. But in streets, where the blades of grass don't grow, everything is like everything else. This is why many children who live in the towns are so extremely naughty. They do not know what is the matter with them, and no more do their fathers and mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, tutors, governesses, a..
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E. Nesbit |
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084e5c3
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I would kiss you on every one of your thousand spears,' she said, 'to give you what you wish.' 'Kiss me once,' it said, 'where my fur is soft. That is all I wish, and enough to live and die for.
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E. Nesbit |
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dde8d5f
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London is like prison for children, especially if their relations are not rich. Of course there are the shops and the theatres, and Maskelyne and Cook's, and things, but if your people are rather poor you don't get taken to the theatres, and you can't buy things out of the shops; and London has none of those nice things that children may play with without hurting the things or themselves -- such as trees and sand and woods and waters. And n..
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E. Nesbit |
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4605dd6
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I'm going to buy buns for tea," said Peter. "I thought you were all so poor," said the Station Master. "So we are," said Peter, confidentially, "but we always have three pennyworth of halfpennies for tea whenever Mother sells a story or a poem or anything."
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E. Nesbit |
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b8da691
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And now trees arched overhead, and the banks of the road were high and bushy. The adventurers had long since ceased to blow their horns. It was too tiring to go on doing that, when there was no one to be annoyed by it.
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E. Nesbit |
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3a55144
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Next day when they had sent the threefold wave of greeting to Father by the Green Dragon, and the old gentleman had waved back as usual, Peter proudly led the way to the station. "But ought we?" said Bobbie. "After the coals, she means," Phyllis explained."
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E. Nesbit |
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After the coals?" repeated Phyllis. "Stop a minute--my bootlace is undone again." "It always IS undone again," said Peter, "and the Station Master was more of a gentleman than you'll ever be, Phil--throwing coal at a chap's head like that."
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E. Nesbit |
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e7f72aa
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He called me un-un-ungentlemanly," sobbed Phyllis. "I didn't never call him unladylike, not even when he tied my Clorinda to the firewood bundle and burned her at the stake for a martyr." Peter had indeed perpetrated this outrage a year or two before. "Well, you began, you know," said Bobbie, honestly, "about coals and all that. Don't you think you'd better both unsay everything since the wave, and let honour be satisfied?" "I will if Peter..
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E. Nesbit |
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d569c6a
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They reached the station and spent a joyous two hours with the Porter. He was a worthy man and seemed never tired of answering the questions that begin with "Why--" which many people in higher ranks of life often seem weary of. He told them many things that they had not known before--as, for instance, that the things that hook carriages together are called couplings, and that the pipes like great serpents that hang over the couplings are me..
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E. Nesbit |
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16f0008
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In such delightful conversation the time went by all too quickly. The Station Master came out once or twice from that sacred inner temple behind the place where the hole is that they sell you tickets through, and was most jolly with them all. "Just as if coal had never been discovered," Phyllis whispered to her sister. He gave them each an orange, and promised to take them up into the signal-box one of these days, when he wasn't so busy."
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E. Nesbit |
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3ef5fb9
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and eyes as bright,
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E. Nesbit |
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ff6a0d5
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glorious
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E. Nesbit |
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5bac636
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Yes," said the King sadly, "I fear there's no doubt about it. Your maid has turned into an Automatic Nagging Machine."
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E. Nesbit |
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c5b3941
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Sometimes she would sigh when she opened them and say:-- "Another story come home to roost. Oh, dear, Oh, dear!" and then the children would be very sorry."
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E. Nesbit |
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e3173ee
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The nine rubies were used afterwards in agriculture. You had only to throw them out into a field if you wanted it plowed. Then the whole surface of the land turned itself over in its anxiety to get rid of something so wicked, and in the morning the field was found to be plowed as thoroughly as any young man at Oxford.
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fairy-tales
drinking
humor
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E. Nesbit |
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3cfa10c
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Only three people got out of the 11.54. The first was a countryman with two baskety boxes full of live chickens who stuck their russet heads out anxiously through the wicker bars; the second was Miss Peckitt, the grocer's wife's cousin, with a tin box and three brown- paper parcels; and the third-- "Oh! my Daddy, my Daddy!" That scream went like a knife into the heart of everyone in the train, and people put their heads out of the windows t..
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E. Nesbit |