[PREFACE]

Many of the selections of this little volume of child’s verse have appeared from time to time in “The Youth’s Companion”, “Ladies’ World”, “Farm and Home”, “Outlook”, “Sunday School Times”, “Forward”, and “The Independent”; and if, in bringing them together, occasionally here and there verses a trifle beyond “the barefoot time” have crept in, perhaps they were not unintentionally admitted for “children of a larger growth”.

A. F. C.

CONTENTS

Page
[The Barefoot Time]9
[The Old Folks in the Country]10
[Work]11
[Queer Little Historians]12
[Then and Now]13
[Bob’s Quandary]14
[Five Spinners]15
[The Tenement Babies]16
[A Fishing Seer]17
[Just A-Wishing]18
[A Prison House]19
[The Little Hair Trunk]20
[Mr. Frog’s Wisdom]21
[Strange People]23
[Bobby Dreamed]24
[Hard Things]24
[How the Camel Got his Hump]25
[A Summer Task]26
[Character]26
[The Attic Rubbish]27
[A Weed]28
[Regret]28
[His Change of Name]29
[With Outstretched Cup]30
[The Conqueror]30
[Father’s Advice]31
[One Guide]32
[Little Polly Mary]33
[Teddy’s Query]33
[The Seven Sleepers]34
[Bridges We Never Cross]35
[A Poor Town to Live In]36
[With Those Who Can’t Keep Up]37
[Heroes]38
[In Sleighing Time]39
[Protected]40
[Grandmother’s Stitches]41
[Four to One]42
[The New Glasses]43
[The Two Ways]44
[A Wise Waiting]45
[The Visitant]46
[Work and Worry]46
[The Prize Winner]47
[To-day and To-morrow]48
[The Crippled Hero]49
[Mr. Bushel’s Hospitality]51
[The Wish-Man]52
[A Little Mathematician]54
[The Castle of My Dreams]55
[The Pasture Bars]56

[THE BAREFOOT TIME]

Oh, the golden age of the barefoot time,