ALL HALLOWE’EN
SHADOW MARCH
Used by special permission of Charles Scribner and Sons.
All around the house is the jet black night, It stares through the window-pane, It creeps in the corners hiding from the light And it moves with the moving flame. Now my little heart goes a-beating like a drum, With the breath of the bogie in my hair, While all around the candle the crooked shadows come And go marching along up the stair. The shadow of the baluster, the shadow of the light, The shadow of the child that goes to bed, All the wicked shadows come a tramp, tramp, tramp, With the black night overhead. Robert Louis Stevenson.
TWINKLING FEET’S HALLOWE’EN
One Hallowe’en a band of merry pixies were dancing round and round a bright green ring in the meadow. In the center stood the Little Fiddler, playing his gayest music, and keeping time with his head and one tiny foot. The faster he played, the merrier the little creatures danced. What sport it was to twirl and twist in time with the fairy music, which the jolly little elf brought out from his tiny instrument. No wonder the pixies laughed until their sides ached. And so, indeed, did their little musician. Sometimes he was obliged to stop playing for a few seconds in order to catch his breath.
Now there was one pixie named Twinkling Feet who was the best dancer in the ring, and he could cut such queer little capers that his companions fairly shrieked with laughter when they looked at him. Suddenly he thought what sport it would be to play a trick on all the little dancers. Very slyly he tripped his partner, and the two fell down in the grass, dragging with them one pixie after another until all in the circle were sprawling on the ground. There they lay for several seconds, a wriggling mass of green coats and red caps. It was some time before they could pick themselves up. Many of them laughed heartily at the mishap, but a few were so badly bruised that they were obliged to slip away and bathe their shins in the evening dew.