Seven Little People and their Friends   By: Horace Elisha Scudder (1838-1902)

by

HORACE E. SCUDDER

Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company

The Riverside Press Cambridge

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by Horace E. Scudder in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

[Illustration: Shahtah gets the coat on with difficulty. See p. 178. ]

The Seven Little People who have lived with me for the last two or three years, and with whom I have been wont to entertain my friends among the children, are now about to leave their quiet home and make their appearance in society. The experience which they severally have enjoyed, whether under the sea or in Percanian palaces, or on desert islands, or upon birth nights, has perhaps hardly fitted them for associating with the world's people; and yet, I trust, they will find some glad to receive them, and hear them tell of the friends whom they found in their various wanderings. It is true that two of these Little People have no friends at all, but then it was their own choice, for did they not deliberately cast themselves away, and abjure all society but that of their mute companion? It will be found also that in one of these Stories there are no Little People, but it is no more than just that the Friends should for once be allowed their drama to themselves. All of these Seven are the children of my brain, and I am somewhat loth to let them go so far from me; but if they find no hospitable fireside to receive them, they will at least always be welcome at mine.

CONTENTS

THE THREE WISHES WISH THE FIRST Under the Sea 11 WISH THE SECOND On the Mountain 37 WISH THE THIRD AND LAST In the Cottage 49

A CHRISTMAS STOCKING WITH A HOLE IN IT I. The Stocking is Hung 57 II. Midnight 71 III. Kleiner Traum Visits Peter Mit 79 IV. Kleiner Traum Visits David Morgridge 88 V. Morgridge Klaus 92

THE LITTLE CASTAWAYS 99

A FAERY SURPRISE PARTY 133

THE ROCK ELEPHANT 149

THE OLD BROWN COAT I. The Gift 175 II. The Sacrifice 199

NEW YEAR'S DAY IN THE GARDEN 219

THE THREE WISHES

BESSIE'S STORY

Wish the First. Under the Sea.

[Illustration]

Little Effie Gilder's porridge did taste good! and so it ought; for beside that Mother Gilder made it, and Mother Gilder's porridge was always just right, Effie was eating it on her seat upon the sea shore in front of her father's house. The sun was just going down and the tide was rising, so that the little waves came tumbling up on the beach, as if they were racing, each one falling headlong on the sand in the scramble to get there first; and then slipping back again, there would be left a long streak of white foam just out of reach of Effie. She was sitting on what she called her chair, but it was a chair without legs or back or arms only a great flat stone, where she used to come every sunshiny afternoon and eat her bowl of porridge.