"My looking-glass is like a pool,
As still and clear, as blank and cool.
"It fronts the clean white nursery wall,
With no look on its face at all.
"But when in front of it I go,
Why, there I am, from top to toe.
"Oh, just suppose I hurried there
Some day to brush my tousled hair,
"And stood and stared, and could not see
One single, single sign of me!"
When it was nearly time to leave the February house, Ann remarked that
Amos had talked in prose straight along ever since they came.
Amos smiled proudly. "So I have," he said. He was about to go on to say
that he wondered if he would be caught at all, when--whiz! with a scramble
and a scuffle a cuckoo rushed out of a clock just above his head and
bobbed intently up and down twelve times. Amos had got only as far as
"wonder." "Wonder--wonder--" he stammered, as he heard the clock.
"Wonder--wonder--
"Wonder if George Washington
Did just the way we do?
Wonder if he slid on ice,
And now and then broke through;
Slid on ice, and fought with snow,
And whittled hickory sticks,
Called his brother 'April Fool!'
And played him April tricks?
"Wonder if he shed his shirt
Down beneath the beeches,
Kicked his buckled slippers off,
And his buckled breeches,
Jumped into the swimming-pool,
And gave a splendid shout,
Glad and wiggly, clean and cool,
Splashing like a trout?
"Wonder did he sit in school,
And try to work a sum,
With bumblebees all mumbling,
'Summer's come, summer's come!'
If he used to count the days,
And give a sort of sigh,
Because--how queer!--there couldn't be
A Fourth in his July!
"Wonder if he ever took
His history and read
Tales of mighty generals,
Glorious and dead;
Turned the leaves and wished that he
Could be a hero, too?
Wonder if George Washington
Felt the way we do?"