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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STORIES FOR BOYS AND GIRLS ***

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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