Excerpt from The Flower and the Star, and Other Stories for Children Clumps of oaks with their old twisted bran ches, and long avenues of smooth-skinned beeches with their graceful boughs droop ing to the ground, and birches with their flickering foliage and white stems like silver in the sunlight; and there were many other trees besides. And the great boughs arched over like the roof of some grand cathedral; and the wind made music there; and the light played in and out among the leaves, leaping through the green windows, chas ing the wind. When the wind blew through the leaves, in came the light; and the wind shouted out, and the light laughed; and then the birds sang as if they were play mates too; and the children laughed, enjoy ing the forest pleasures. And the forest was so full of all sweet sounds, - the glad voices of happy creatures! Sometimes a wood-pigeon would Whisper coaxingly from the thickest part of the beech-trees, inviting them to come into the forest depths; and. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.