Haw-thorne was one of our greatest writers of stories. He was a pretty boy with golden curls. He was fond of all the great poets, and he read Shake-speare and Mil-ton and many other poets as soon as he was old enough to un-der-stand them.
Haw-thorne grew up a very hand-some young fellow. One day he was walking in the woods. He met an old gypsy woman. She had never seen anybody so fine-looking.
“Are you a man, or an angel?” she asked him.
Some of Haw-thorne’s best books are written for girls and boys. One of these is called “The Won-der Book.” Another of his books for young people is “Tan-gle-wood Tales.”
Pres-cott wrote beautiful his-to-ries. When Pres-cott was a boy, a school-mate threw a crust of bread at him. It hit him in the eye. He became almost blind.
He had to do his writing with a machine. This machine was made for the use of the blind. There were no type-writ-ers in those days.
It was hard work to write his-to-ry without good eyes. But Pres-cott did not give up. He had a man to read to him. It took him ten years to write his first book.
When Prescott had finished his book, he was afraid to print it. But his father said, “The man who writes a book, and is afraid to print it, is a cow-ard.”
Then Prescott printed his book. Everybody praised it. When you are older, you will like to read his his-to-ries.