



Produced by David Newman, Chuck Greif, Janet Blenkinship
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net











  Among the Farmyard People

  BY

  Clara Dillingham Pierson

  Author of "Among the Meadow People," and "Forest People".


  Illustrated by F. C. GORDON


  [Illustration]


  NEW YORK
  Copyright by
  E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
  31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET
  1899




TO THE CHILDREN

_Dear Little Friends:_

I want to introduce the farmyard people to you, and to have you call
upon them and become better acquainted as soon as you can. Some of them
are working for us, and we surely should know them. Perhaps, too, some
of us are working for them, since that is the way in this delightful
world of ours, and one of the happiest parts of life is helping and
being helped.

It is so in the farmyard, and although there is not much work that the
people there can do for each other, there are many kind things to be
said, and even the Lame Duckling found that he could make the Blind
Horse happy when he tried. It is there as it is everywhere else, and I
sometimes think that although the farmyard people do not look like us or
talk like us, they are not so very different after all. If you had seen
the little Chicken who wouldn't eat gravel when his mother was reproving
him, you could not have helped knowing his thoughts even if you did not
understand a word of the Chicken language. He was thinking, "I don't
care! I don't care a bit! So now!" That was long since, for he was a
Chicken when I was a little girl, and both of us grew up some time ago.
I think I have always been more sorry for him because when he was
learning to eat gravel I was learning to eat some things which I did not
like; and so, you see, I knew exactly how he felt. But it was not until
afterwards that I found out how his mother felt.

That is one of the stories which I have been keeping a long time for
you, and the Chicken was a particular friend of mine. I knew him better
than I did some of his neighbors; yet they were all pleasant
acquaintances, and if I did not see some of these things happen with my
own eyes, it is just because I was not in the farmyard at the right
time. There are many other tales I should like to tell you about them,
but one mustn't make the book too fat and heavy for your hands to hold,
so I will send you these and keep the rest.

Many stories might be told about our neighbors who live out-of-doors,
and they are stories that ought to be told, too, for there are still
boys and girls who do not know that animals think and talk and work, and
love their babies, and help each other when in trouble. I knew one boy
who really thought it was not wrong to steal newly built birds'-nests,
and I have seen girls--quite large ones, too--who were afraid of Mice!
It was only last winter that a Quail came to my front door, during the
very cold weather, and snuggled down into the warmest corner he could
find