Little Wanderlin, and Other Fairy Tales, by A. and E. Keary (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1865 Excerpt: ... MRS. CALKILL'S WONDERFUL UNDERGROUND HOUSE. UNT Annie, tell us a story about some boys, and let the good ones be very good, and the bad ones very bad, for you know we don't like things to be done in a halfand-half way." "How many boys will you have in the story?" "If they are princes, two will be enough; but if they are less than princes, we must have five or six." t "Be content with four, and I think I can satisfy you. I will tell you a story about the four sons of Count Stumplehausen, who lived in a tumbledown old castle on the borders of the Black Forest. That is not a bad beginning to a story, now is it? Their names were Prat, Pry, Slip, and Saunter." "What curious short names and pray, now, which were good and which were naughty?" "They were all naughty. When I have seen such a thing as a good boy, I will tell you a story about one; you must wait till then. Prat, Pry, Slip, and Saunter were all one as bad as another--it is common enough for four brothers to be so. The strange thing about Count Stumplehausen's sons was, that they were all four so exactly alike, that neither their father nor their tutor nor their nurse could tell them apart. If their mother had been alive, she might have known them; but she died when they were quite little, and as they were all very active and always in mischief, they occasioned the greatest possible confusion in the castle. While one red-cheeked black-eyed boy was doing something he ought not to do up-stairs, another red-cheeked black-eyed boy was equally busy in the hall, and a third at the bottom of the garden, and a fourth out on the castle roof; and they changed places so quickly, and were so here, there and everywhere in a minute, that there was no use in any of the grown-up people trying to find out who was who, ...