ONE DA y JIMMY CHIPMUNK found a blue tie in the woods. It was of the most beautiful color he had ever seen, and he loved it immedi• ately, but it had a hole torn in one end. So he took it to the tailor, who was a spider.
The spider handled it carefully.
"A beautiful piece of goods, Mr. Chipmunk," he said. "I don't know when I ever handled finer. But it needs a patch where that big three-cornered tear is, and I haven't anything that would match."
Everything that the spider said made Jimmy admire the tie more and more, so putting it in his pocket, he set out to find a piece of cloth to match it .
But north or south, east or west, he could find nothing of that beautiful blue. So at last he went to see the wise woodchuck.
Jimmy Chipmunk found him on the terrace in front of his hole
doing a jig-saw picture puzzle. The woodchuck looked up long enough to nod to Jimmy and then bowed over his puzzle again .
"I came to ask you where I could find something to match this tie," said Jimmy. But the woodchuck only moved a piece of the puzzle into the wrong place and then picked it up again, sighing and shaking his head. Then he tried another piece, but that was wrong, too.
Jimmy, who had very sharp little eyes, saw just the piece that would fit and pointed it out.
The woodchuck got up and danced a jig.
"I've been hunting for that thing for a month," he exclaimed. "Now, let me see, didn't you ask me a question?"
So Jimmy repeated his question, and the woodchuck thought for
a long time.
"On the mountain," he said at last, "there is a tree that is the highest tree in the world. I should think that you could see every• thing from that tree, though I, of course, have never climbed it, myself."
So Jimmy Chipmunk thanked the. woodchuck and set out.
First he had to climb the moun• tain, and that was a very hard thing for a chipmunk to do. But on the top he saw the great tree, so high that the clouds were caught among its branches.
Tightening his belt, Jimmy be• gan climbing. He climbed for days and days and who knows what would have happened if the tree had not been an oak tree? As it was, poor little Jimmy could find something to eat whenever he be• came exhausted, and every night he slept in a crotch, with one paw in his pocket to make sure that the precious tie was safe.
At last he came to the top, and
there was a green room made of boughs and in it people were having tea. They were very sur• prised at seeing a chipmunk, you may be sure, but Jimmy told them his story and showed them his tie.
"Oh, that is very easily mended," said one of the people, "and since you have been so brave, the least we can do is to help you," and drawing a pair of scissors from his pocket, he snipped out a good piece of sky and handed it to Jimmy.
The way down the tree seemed short, indeed, and as fast as his four legs could carry him, Jimmy ran down the mountain and to the spider, who mended his tie with eight needles at once, so it was done in a minute.
The match was so perfect that by day even a chipmunk could
not have told that there had ever been a tear in that tie. But at night the patch turned dark and there were stars in it .
Henry Beston and his wife, Elizabeth Coatsworth, are no strangers to the world of children's books. Mr. Beston, who wrote his first fairy tale for an English course at Harvard, is the author of many books for children, among them Henry Beston's Fairy Tales, The Tree That Ran Away, Five Bears and Miranda, and The Sons of Kai. In 1964, in honor of The Outermost House by Mr. Beston-long considered one of the finest nature books of modem times-The Outermost House, the little house on the Nauset dunes of Cape Cod where he wrote the book, was declared a "National Literary Monument" by Governor Peabody of Massachusetts. Elizabeth Coats• worth is a Newbery Medal winner and author of over fifty books, including Jon the Unlucky and The Place.
CHIMNEY FARM BEDTIME STORIES were told by Mr. Beston to their two daughters when they were little girls, and later to their grandchildren, and were set down by Miss Coatsworth. Often, the subjects were suggested by the animals or incidents around their Maine farm, from which the book takes its name and where the Bestons still live, winter and summer.
Maurice Day, a neighbor of the Bestons in Maine, illus• trated the stories when they were published originally by The Christian Science Monitor.
No comments:
Post a Comment