Saturday, December 22, 2012

A Favorite Christmas Tale

Chapter 5 of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind In the Willows.

The sheep ran huddling together against the hurdles, blowing out thin nostrils and stamping with delicate fore-feet, their heads thrown back and a light steam rising from the crowded sheep-pen into the frosty air, as the two animals hastened by in high spirits, with much chatter and laughter. They were returning across country after a long day's outing with Otter, hunting and exploring on the wide uplands where certain streams tributary to their own River had their first small beginnings; and the shades of the short winter day were closing in on them, and they had still some distance to go. Plodding at random across the plough, they had heard the sheep and had made for them; and now, leading from the sheep-pen, they found a beaten track that made walking a lighter business, and responded, moreover, to that small inquiring something which all animals carry inside them, saying unmistakably, `Yes, quite right; THIS leads home!'

Click the link to read the rest. The Wind In the Willows is a favorite book of mine. It's possible to buy multiple copies of it, each illustrated by different illustrators: Tasha Tudor, Ernest Shepherd, Arthur Rackham, and many others. It was a favorite of President Theodore Roosevelt's and he read it to his children.

No comments: