Queer Stories for Boys and Girls

Stories for Boys and Girls, by Edward Eggleston

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Title: Queer Stories for Boys and Girls
Author: Edward Eggleston
Release Date: November 22, 2006 [EBook #19896]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Queer Stories
For Boys and Girls

BY
EDWARD EGGLESTON
AUTHOR OF "THE HOOSIER SCHOOLMASTER," "THE HOOSIER SCHOOL-BOY," ETC.

NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1884
Copyright, 1884, by
EDWARD EGGLESTON
TROW'S PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY, NEW YORK.

PREFACE.
The stories here reprinted include nearly all of those which I have written for children in a vein that entitles them to rank as "Queer Stories," that is, stories not entirely realistic in their setting but appealing to the fancy, which is so marked a trait of the minds of boys and girls. "Bobby and the Key-hole" appeared eight or nine years ago in St. Nicholas, and has never before been printed in book form. The others were written earlier for juvenile periodicals of wide repute in their time--periodicals that have now gone the way of almost all young people's magazines, to the land of forgetfulness. Although I recall with pleasure the fact that these little tales enjoyed a considerable popularity when they first appeared, I might just as well as not have called them "The Unlucky Stories." In two or three forms some of the stories that form this collection have appeared in book covers in years past, but always to meet with disaster that was no fault of theirs. Two little books that contained a part of the stories herein reprinted were burned up--plates, cuts and all--in the Chicago fire of 1871. Another book, with some of these stories in it, was issued by a publisher in Boston, who almost immediately failed, leaving the plates in pawn. These fell into the hands of a man who issued a surreptitious edition, and then into the possession of another, to whom at length I was forced to pay a round sum for the plates, in order to extricate my unfortunate tales from the hands of freebooters. This is therefore the first fair and square issue in book form that these stories have had. For this they have been revised by the author, and printed from plates wholly new by the liberality of the present publisher.
E. E.
Owls' Nest, Lake George, 1884.

CONTENTS.
QUEER STORIES. PAGE
Bobby and the Key-hole, a Hoosier Fairy Tale, 3
Mr. Blake's Walking-stick, 23
The Chairs in Council, 60
What the Tea-kettle Said, 67
Crooked Jack, 72
The Funny Little Old Woman, 77
Widow Wiggins' Wonderful Cat, 83
CHICKEN LITTLE STORIES.
Simon and the Garuly, 91
The Joblilies, 101
The Pickaninny, 111
The Great Panjandrum Himself, 120
STORIES TOLD ON A CELLAR-DOOR.
The Story of a Flutter-wheel, 137
The Wood-chopper's Children, 143
The Bound Boy, 149
The Profligate Prince, 155
The Young Soap-boiler, 160
The Shoemaker's Secret, 168
MODERN FABLES.
Flat Tail the Beaver, 177
The Mocking-bird's Singing-school, 181
The Bobolink and the Owl, 185

Queer Stories.

BOBBY AND THE KEY-HOLE.
A Hoosier Fairy Tale.
You think that folks in fine clothes are the only folks that ever see fairies, and that poor folks can't afford them. But in the days of the real old-fashioned "Green Jacket and White Owl's Feather" fairies, it was the poor boy carrying fagots to the cabin of his widowed mother who saw wonders of all sorts wrought by the little people; and it was the poor girl who had a fairy godmother. It must be confessed that the mystery-working, dewdrop-dancing, wand-waving, pumpkin-metamorphosing little rascals have been spoiled of late years by being admitted into fine houses. Having their pictures painted by artists, their praises sung by poets, their adventures told in gilt-edge books, and, above all, getting into the delicious leaves of St. Nicholas, has made them "stuck up," so that it is not the poor girl in the cinders, nor the boy with a bundle of fagots now, but girls who wear button boots and tie-back skirts, and boys with fancy waists and striped stockings that are befriended by fairies, whom they do not need.
But away off from the cities there still lives a race of unflattered fairies who are not snobbish, and who love little girls and boys in pinafores and ragged jackets. These spirits are not very handsome, and so the artists do not draw their pictures, and they do not get into gilt-edge Christmas books. Dear, ugly, good fairies! I hope they will not be spoiled by my telling you something about them.
Little Bobby Towpate saw some of them; and