THE VILLAGE of Hide and SEEK - a Magical Tale of Adventure for Children E-Book

Bingham Thoburn Wilson

• Herausgeber: Abela Publishing
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

On a bright sunny day in the middle of the month of August, a merry group of brightly dressed children were romping upon the green lawn of a country place.
The old-fashioned stone house, with its wide porch and heavily carved wooden columns green-coated with climbing ivy, rose amid the stately trees of the lawn, until it seemed lost in a bower of shadowy foliage. The low, thatch-roofed out-buildings and long lines of a far-reaching fence, stood glistening in the sunlight, quite in harmony with the polished marble window sills of the great stone mansion.
Standing in the very centre of the scene, arose the tall, rustic arm of an old-fashioned well-sweep, that raised or lowered a moss-covered, old oak bucket, filled to overflowing and dripping wet with cool, clear water, frequently visited by this frolicking group of merry children both during and after their play.
As the children rested for a moment beneath the sheltering arms of an old oak tree, they were much surprised to behold the form of a wandering vagabond ambling along the dusty road. His hat was well drawn down over his eyes to avoid the glaring rays of the mid-day sun. Over his shoulder and made fast to the end of a crooked stick, that might have answered as well for a defence as for a staff, hung his sum total of earthly possessions, tied carefully into a small bundle and as carefully hid from view within the folds of a red bandanna handkerchief...
And so begins the magical adventure to the Village of Hide and Seek. But what does the vagabond have to do with this bunch of happily cavorting children? And, just who is Aunt Twaddles? Well you’ll have to download and read the book to find out.
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KEYWORDS/TAGS: Village of Hide and Seek, fairy tales, fairytales, folklore, myths, legends, children’s stories, children’s books, children’s fantasy, fables, bedtime stories, wonderland, parents with children, parents to be, grandparents, mothers with children, mothers to be, nursery school, king, kindergarten, kindergarden, Arthur, Aunt Twaddles, beautiful, Claus, dolls, Dreams, face, far, golden, great, Island, journey, magical, Maud, merry, happy, , mountain, old, path, palace, prince, princess, pennyroyal, Queen, River, Santa Claus,, stream, sweet, tall, throne, Vagabond, valley, village, water, wild, well, wonderland

Leseprobe

The VillageofHide and Seek

By

Bingham Thoburn Wilson

Illustrations By

W. Herbert Dunton

Originally Published By

Consolidated Retail Booksellers, New York

[1905]

Resurrected ByAbela Publishing, London[2019]

The Village of Hide and Seek

Typographical arrangement of this edition

© Abela Publishing 2018

This book may not be reproduced in its current format in any manner in any media, or transmitted by any means whatsoever, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, or mechanical ( including photocopy, file or video recording, internet web sites, blogs, wikis, or any other information storage and retrieval system) except as permitted by law without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Abela Publishing,

London

United Kingdom

2018

ISBN-13: 978-8-XXXXXX-XX-X

email

[email protected]

website

www.AbelaPublishing.com

Dedication

To the children of poverty and rags.

To the Household of sorrow and burdensome care.

To the lives in the shadow of the dark gaunt form of woe.

To those whose ears have been attuned to the hollow, mocking voice of Grief.

To the humblest of the humble, the Poor; the very poor.

And may this story prove to be starlight if not sunshine.

Very respectfully,

The Author

Contents

I."His Highness," the Vagabond

II.Aunt Twaddles

III.The Path up the Cliff

IV.The Cave in the Mountain

V.The Village of Hide and Seek

VI.The Queen of the Dolls

VII.Kimbo, the Giant

VIII.The Island of Dreams

IX.Soda Water Fountain

X.In the Village of Hide and Seek

List of Illustrations

Frontisepiece

Almost dumb with surprise, the children turned about to gaze on the world that lay far beneath them

All the odd, ill-fitting garments ... were changed into raiments of rich lace and gold

He seemed to be leaping over great fields fully a mile at a stride

The children stopped to look back upon the spot from which they had just come

"Looking upward they were amazed to behold the open sky filled with sweet-voiced angels"

"He gave the old harp a nimble sweep with his dexterous fingers that filled the air with enchanting music"

"Perhaps you have noticed by my long hair and studious demeanor that I am both a gentleman and a scholar"

THE VILLAGE OF HIDE AND SEEK

CHAPTER I "His Highness," The Vagabond

On a bright sunny day in the middle of the month of August, a merry group of gaily dressed children were romping upon the green lawn of a country place, that, from its well kept and cleanly surroundings, could not have been mistaken for any other than the home of some prosperous and perhaps retired gentleman of wealth and refinement.

The old-fashioned stone house, with its wide porch and heavily carved wooden columns green-coated with climbing ivy, rose amid the stately trees of the lawn, until it seemed lost in a bower of shadowy foliage. The low, thatch-roofed out-buildings and long lines of far-reaching fence, carefully coated with fresh whitewash, stood glistening in the sunlight, quite in harmony with the polished marble window sills of the great stone mansion.

Standing in the very centre of the scene, like some still lingering remnant of the long gone and almost forgotten past, arose the tall, rustic arm of an old-fashioned well-sweep, that raised or lowered a moss-covered, old oaken bucket, filled to overflowing and dripping wet with cool, clear water, not unfrequently visited by this gamboling group of merry children both during and after their play.

As the children rested for a moment beneath the sheltering arms of an old oak tree, they were much surprised to behold the form of a wandering vagabond ambling along the dusty road. His hat was well drawn down over his eyes to avoid the glaring rays of the mid-day sun. Over his shoulder and made fast to the end of a crooked stick, that might have answered as well for a defence as for a staff, hung his sum total of earthly possessions, tied carefully into a small bundle and as carefully hid from view within the folds of a red bandanna handkerchief.

A passing glance only was needed to tell that the wanderer was weary; and as his eyes, glistening with envy, beheld the cool shade of the trees, and the still more inviting bucket above the well, that, half-filled and leaking, hung suspended in mid-air, he halted his weary pace in the road near the gate and beckoned the children to approach.

No second invitation was needed. The boys, more daring and venturesome, bounded toward him with a merry shout and were soon standing on the edge of the lawn near the wanderer; but the little girls, like so many timid fawns of the forest, with a feeling more of fear than of curiosity, lingered tardily behind; and it was some time before they joined their less cautious companions.

He was a curious-looking, but quite jolly vagabond indeed; and although his face was begrimed and smeared with mingled perspiration and dust, his eyes shone with a merry, good-natured twinkle, as he doffed his well worn and dusty black hat and bowed with an air of politeness, quite unknown to the common everyday tramp of the highways of the world.

One of the children laughingly exclaimed:

"Where are you going?"

And another: "Where did you come from?"

And still a third: "Where is your home?"

And so on, until the now smiling vagabond, waiting for a chance to reply, stood bowing and scraping in the middle of the sunbaked road as he calmly received volley after volley of almost unanswerable questions.

"Well!" he exclaimed at last, as the children became suddenly silent, "you ask me where I am from and where I am going, so now let me say: just at present I am from everywhere in general and bound nowhere in particular!"

And he began pounding the dust from his body and limbs with his old hat, as if wishing to make himself look presentable, even if out in the middle of a hot, dusty roadway; and looking up with a longing glance, he asked permission to obtain a drink of water from the well on the lawn.

The big gate was still closed to "His Most Royal Highness," and as the mere thought of his entering the lawn dawned upon the minds of the now silent children, they drew back in affright and with solemn faces; nor would they think of granting the stranger's request until finally one little fellow called his companions together for a moment, as he almost pleadingly said:

"It is wrong to deny a poor man a drink of water. He is weary and perhaps far from home, while God gives us the water so freely. Beside, he cannot take the shade of these trees away with him when he goes, so, while he rests on the lawn, I will bring him a drink from the well myself."

And with a light foot, but a much lighter heart, the boy bounded away in haste, while the weary "Knight of the Road" entered the shadow of a big maple tree on the lawn and stood waiting for him to return.

As he gulped down the cool, refreshing water in a manner as though famished, he blinked his bright sparkling eyes in evidence of much relish; then casting a thankful glance upon the face of his new found friend, he turned toward him with a smile as he said:

"My little lad, for your kind act to a weary and thirsty man let me say; if you will gather your little friends about me under the shade of this tree, I will tell you an interesting story, which, if you will listen carefully, may give you something of my past wanderings as well as an answer to some of the questions you asked of me while I was out in the road."

Without a word of reply, the children, anxious to know what the stranger's story might be, sank here and there upon the grass, as the vagabond thus began his strange tale.

CHAPTER II "Aunt Twaddles"

"As I paused in the middle of the road near the gate," began the vagabond, "this manly little fellow who so kindly brought me a drink from the well, wanted to know where I came from. In answer to his question let me say: I am, as you see, a friendless vagabond, wandering hither and thither over the face of the earth. But think not that I never had a home; for although I may not look it, I once had a dear mother, just as each one of you has, who, when I was a baby kissed me and rocked me to sleep every night with a sweet lullaby. But that was a long time ago, and it is little wonder that, as you now gaze upon me, you are anxious to know who I am and whence I came.

"Now I might be an earthly prince in disguise for aught that you know, though I'm not. Yet right here let me say, I am the son of a King, for we are all the children of God and our earthly end is alike in this dust that some of you children at first so pretended to scorn as you saw it all over my clothes. So from this on, remember, we are only of the dust; and the babies of satins and silks, all humbled at last, shall lie down and sleep side by side with the children of tatters and rags.

"Be that as it may; I was born in the village of Harpers Ferry on the banks of the fair Shenandoah River, where lofty mountains rise and overhang with rugged cliffs that seem about to fall into the deep valley below; and where, in order to get into the town at all, the trains pass through a dark tunnel in the mountains, and leaping with shrill whistle across the long span of a great steel bridge, slow down and stop at a quaint, stone station, so closely surrounded by tall mountains on all sides that a traveller might think himself at the very end of the world.

"It is here that the wild Shenandoah empties its foaming waters into the Potomac River, (for be it remembered that the two streams were joined in Holy wedlock by the Indians long, long ago), and mingling their currents in loving embrace, they leap onward through a pass in the mountains and together journey joyfully eastward toward the sea.

"As the stranger stands upon the platform at the little stone station, and gazes far across the Shenandoah River, he cannot help noticing a dark path, or roadway, leading straight up the face of a steep cliff; and long will he wonder how it could ever be possible to climb that path, for it stands almost straight up and down.

"Right here let me say there are but three persons on earth who can truthfully boast of having once included that path as a part of their journey; while strangest of all is the fact that one of these was an old woman, so awkward and fat that she looked to be almost helpless, while the other two, at the time of ascent, were mere children.

"For many years prior to the time of my story, (how long, nobody ever could tell), there dwelt an old woman somewhere up in these mountains, and unless something has happened to her recently she is living there still.

"She was a strange-looking creature and from her jolly, good nature and laughing, happy way, had grown in weight until she must have tipped the scales at fully five hundred pounds.

"She did not look in the least like a mountain climber, nor in fact hardly able to mount a short flight of stairs; yet she was a quite frequent wanderer up and down the opposite bank of the river, where most of her time was spent in gathering wild herbs on the rough side of the mountain, or along the fertile bed of the Shenandoah.

"When the great bag, which she always carried slung over her shoulder, was filled with herbs almost to bursting, she would start at the bottom of this high cliff, and, aided by the scrubby bushes that grew from the dark fissures in the mountain's time scarred face, she would manage in some mysterious way to drag her full five hundred weight with its load to the top, and then disappear in the mountain woodland above.

"It was not only a tiresome, but likewise a dangerous journey, for there were few places where she could catch her toes in the steep rock; and as she climbed slowly upward, and with much difficulty felt for each foothold, her great body swayed and staggered upon the face of the cliff, while she puffed and blew from her toil so loudly that her heavy breathing could plainly be heard far across in the village of Harpers Ferry.