American Fairy Tales

Name: American Fairy Tales
Author: L. Frank Baum

by L. Frank Baum

Pages: about 105
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 1.9 h at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 64 min at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

An accomplished wizard once lived on the top floor of a tenement house and passed his time in thoughtful study and studious thought. What he didn’t know about wizardry was hardly worth knowing, for he possessed all the books and recipes of all the wizards who had lived before him; and, moreover, he had invented several wizardments himself.
This admirable person would have been completely happy but for the numerous interruptions to his studies caused by folk who came to consult him about their troubles (in which he was not interested), and by the loud knocks of the iceman, the milkman, the baker’s boy, the laundryman and the peanut woman. He never dealt with any of these people; but they rapped at his door every day to see him about this or that or to try to sell him their wares. Just when he was most deeply interested in his books or engaged in watching the bubbling of a cauldron there would come a knock at his door. And after sending the intruder away he always found he had lost his train of thought or ruined his compound.
At length these interruptions aroused his anger, and he decided he must have a dog to keep people away from his door. He didn’t know where to find a dog, but in the next room lived a poor glass-blower with whom he had a slight acquaintance; so he went into the man’s apartment and asked:
“A good dog. One that will bark at people and drive them away. One that will be no trouble to keep and won’t expect to be fed. One that has no fleas and is neat in his habits. One that will obey me when I speak to him. In short, a good dog,” said the wizard.
“Such a dog is hard to find,” returned the glass-blower, who was busy making a blue glass flower pot with a pink glass rosebush in it, having green glass leaves and yellow glass roses.

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American Fairy Tales

From the opening

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