THE SERPENT
THE SERPENT
Three boys were playing together in a field; and as they played, one passing by called to them: "Beware! in the corner of that field is a poisonous serpent, whose bite is death."
"Alas!" said one child. "How terrible, to think that anything evil should be in a place so lovely. Let me flee from it!" and he wept, and ran from the place.
"Why," said the second child, "should such a thing be here? what is the reason of it?" and he found himself a safe place, and sat down to ponder on the matter.
The third child picked up a stone. "Show it to me!" he said.
-- Laura E. Richards, The Silver Crown: Another Book of Fables, 1906
Laura Elizabeth (Howe) Richards (1850-1943) was the daughter of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, an abolitionist and the founder of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for the Blind, and of Julia Ward Hlowe, who wrote the lyrics for "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." She was a pre-kindergarten- to-second-grade elementary schoolteacher in Gardiner, Maine. She published some ninety books during her lifetime, including biographies, poetry, and children's books. Julia Ward Howe 1819-1910, a biography she co-wrote with her sisters, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1917. Her children's book, Tirra Lirra: Rhymes New and Old, won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1959. Among her best-known books was Captain January, 1891, which was made into a Shirley Temple movie in 1936. One lof her most popular poems for children was "Elephony," 1932 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJVSDAdxpNc).
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