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    A Little Boy Lost
    A Little Boy Lost
    A Little Boy Lost
    Ebook182 pages2 hours

    A Little Boy Lost

    By W. H. Hudson

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    About this ebook

    "A Little Boy Lost" is a 1905 novel by W. H. Hudson. It is the charming tale of Martin, a young boy who walks a bit further from his house every day each day until he reaches mystical land full of talkative animals, friendly gnomes, and mist people. William Henry Hudson (1841 - 1922) was an Anglo-Argentine naturalist, author, and ornithologist. He was one of the founding members of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and is best known for his novel "Green Mansions" (1904). Other notable works include "A Little Boy Lost" (1905) and "Far Away and Long Ago" (1918), which has since been adapted into a film. Hudson is considered a national treasure in Argentina, and his legacy lives on in the form of an Italian town and numerous other public places named after him. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWhite Press
    Release dateDec 5, 2016
    ISBN9781473346642
    A Little Boy Lost
    Author

    W. H. Hudson

    William Henry Hudson (1841–1922) was an author and naturalist. Hudson was born in Argentina, the son of English and American parents. There, he studied local plants and animals as a young man, publishing his findings in Proceedings of the Royal Zoological Society, in a mixture of English and Spanish. Hudson’s familiarity with nature was readily evident in later novels such as A Crystal Age and Green Mansions. He later aided the founding of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

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    • 4/5
      Very good children's book. I read a kindle version with none of the illustrations but the author painted such a great imaginative picture that I didn't feel the loss of those. According to the author's note, he was simply trying to convey how the imagination of a young child works in the perception of things such as mirages and the athropomorphization of the creatures the child encounters. The book works brilliantly on that level.

    Book preview

    A Little Boy Lost - W. H. Hudson

    1.png

    A LITTLE BOY LOST

    BY

    W. H. HUDSON

    ILLUSTRATED BY

    A. D. M'CORMICK

    Copyright © 2016 Read Books Ltd.

    This book is copyright and may not be

    reproduced or copied in any way without

    the express permission of the publisher in writing

    British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

    A catalogue record for this book is available from

    the British Library

    Contents

    William Henry Hudson

    CHAPTER I

    THE HOME ON THE GREAT PLAIN

    CHAPTER II

    THE SPOONBILL AND THE CLOUD

    CHAPTER III

    CHASING A FLYING FIGURE

    CHAPTER IV

    MARTIN IS FOUND BY A DEAF OLD MAN

    CHAPTER V

    THE PEOPLE OF THE MIRAGE

    CHAPTER VI

    MARTIN MEETS WITH SAVAGES

    CHAPTER VII

    ALONE IN THE GREAT FOREST

    CHAPTER VIII

    THE FLOWER AND THE SERPENT

    CHAPTER IX

    THE BLACK PEOPLE OF THE SKY

    CHAPTER X

    A TROOP OF WILD HORSES

    CHAPTER XI

    THE LADY OF THE HILLS

    CHAPTER XII

    THE LITTLE PEOPLE UNDERGROUND

    CHAPTER XIII

    THE GREAT BLUE WATER

    CHAPTER XIV

    THE WONDERS OF THE HILLS

    CHAPTER XV

    MARTIN'S EYES ARE OPENED

    CHAPTER XVI

    THE PEOPLE OF THE MIST

    CHAPTER XVII

    THE OLD MAN OF THE SEA

    CHAPTER XVIII

    MARTIN PLAYS WITH THE WAVES

    William Henry Hudson

    William Henry Hudson was born on 4 August 1841 in a borough of Quilmes (now Florecio Varela) in Greater Buenos Aires, Argentina. His parents, Daniel and Catherine Hudson, were American settlers of English and Irish origin. His father was a sheep farmer on a small farm in Argentina, but was sadly unsuccessful. He then turned to potato growing for a paltry existence and this led the family to near financial ruin.

    Hudson spent his childhood exploring the local flora and fauna and observing the natural and human drama, on what was a lawless frontier at that time. At around fourteen or fifteen, Hudson became seriously ill with a bout of typhus, soon followed by rheumatic fever. These illnesses permanently affected his health and caused him to become more studious and contemplative. His parents obtained many books for him and his siblings to read and he occasionally had some formal education from a visiting school teacher. Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) The Origin of Species (1859), in particular, made a lasting impression on him.

    Little is known about Hudson in the period following his parents’ death. He became a wanderer, occasionally publishing his ornithological work in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society. He initially wrote in an English that was interlaced with Spanish idioms. He appears to have particularly loved Patagonia. Hudson immigrated to London, England in 1869, where he eventually became a British subject in 1900. In 1876 he married a much older woman and they lived precariously on the money earned from two boarding houses that she owned. She eventually inherited a house in Bayswater, London and the couple moved there.

    Hudson produced a series of ornithological studies throughout his life, including Argentine Ornithology (1888-1899) and British Birds (1895). These books on ornithological studies attracted the attention of the statesman, Sir Edward Grey (1862-1933), who got Hudson a state pension in 1901. Hudson later achieved fame with his books on the English countryside, such as Hampshire Day (1903), Afoot in England (1909), and A Shepherd’s Life (1910), which helped foster the back to nature movement of the 1920s and 1930s. His most famous fictional novel was Green Mansions (1904) which was an exotic romance about a traveller in the Guyana Jungle in Venezuela and his encounter with a mysterious forest girl who is half human and half bird. This romance and some of Hudson’s other romances attracted the friendship of other fiction writers, such as Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) and George Gissing (1857-1903). Hudson’s most popular non-fiction novel was Far Away and Long Ago (1918) which recalls his childhood in Argentina. Some of his other titles include Birds and Man (1901), A Little Lost Boy (1905), Tales of the Pampas (1916), Ralph Herne (1923), and Mary’s Little Lamb (1929).

    Away from his literary work, Hudson was a founding member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Towards the end of his life he moved to Worthing, Sussex, England. He died on 18 August 1922 and is buried at Broadwater and Worthing Cemetery in Worthing where his epitaph refers to his love of birds and green places. Even after his death, Hudson had a huge legacy. In Argentina where he is known as Guillermo Enrique Hudson, his work is considered to belong to the national literature. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) also famously refers to Hudson’s early book The Purple Land (1885) in his novel The Sun Also Rises (1926) and again to Hudson’s Far Away and Long Ago in his posthumous novel, The Garden of Eden (1986). Hudson has also had two South American bird species named after him as well as a town in Berazategui Partidd and several other public places and institutions.

    CHAPTER I

    THE HOME ON THE GREAT PLAIN

    Some like to be one thing, some another. There is so much to be done, so many different things to do, so many trades! Shepherds, soldiers, sailors, ploughmen, carters—one could go on all day naming without getting to the end of them. For myself, boy and man, I have been many things, working for a living, and sometimes doing things just for pleasure; but somehow, whatever I did, it never seemed quite the right and proper thing to do—it never quite satisfied me. I always wanted to do something else—I wanted to be a carpenter. It seemed to me that to stand among wood-shavings and sawdust, making things at a bench with bright beautiful tools out of nice-smelling wood, was the cleanest, healthiest, prettiest work that any man can do. Now all this has nothing, or very little, to do with my story: I only spoke of it because I had to begin somehow, and it struck me that I would make a start that way. And for another reason, too.  His father was a carpenter. I mean Martin's father—Martin, the Little Boy Lost. His father's name was John, and he was a very good man and a good carpenter, and he loved to do his carpentering better than anything else; in fact as much as I should have loved it if I had been taught that trade. He lived in a seaside town, named Southampton, where there is a great harbour, where he saw great ships coming and going to and from all parts of the world. Now, no strong, brave man can live in a place like that, seeing the ships and often talking to the people who voyaged in them about the distant lands where they had been, without wishing to go and see those distant countries for himself. When it is winter in England, and it rains and rains, and the east wind blows, and it is grey and cold and the trees are bare, who does not think how nice it would be to fly away like the summer birds to some distant country where the sky is always blue and the sun shines bright and warm every day? And so it came to pass that John, at last, when he was an old man, sold his shop, and went abroad. They went to a country many thousands of miles away—for you must know that Mrs. John went too; and when the sea voyage ended, they travelled many days and weeks in a wagon until they came to the place where they wanted to live; and there, in that lonely country, they built a house, and made a garden, and planted an orchard. It was a desert, and they had no neighbours, but they were happy enough because they had as much land as they wanted, and the weather was always bright and beautiful; John, too, had his carpenter's tools to work with when he felt inclined; and, best of all, they had little Martin to love and think about.

    But how about Martin himself? You might think that with no other child to prattle to and play with or even to see, it was too lonely a home for him. Not a bit of it! No child could have been happier. He did not want for company; his playfellows were the dogs and cats and chickens, and any creature in and about the house. But most of all he loved the little shy creatures that lived in the sunshine among the flowers—the small birds and butterflies, and little beasties and creeping things he was accustomed to see outside the gate among the tall, wild sunflowers. There were acres of these plants, and they were taller than Martin, and covered with flowers no bigger than marigolds, and here among the sunflowers he used to spend most of the day, as happy as possible.

    He had other amusements too. Whenever John went to his carpenter's shop—for the old man still dearly loved his carpentering—Martin would run in to keep him company. One thing he liked to do was to pick up the longest wood-shavings, to wind them round his neck and arms and legs, and then he would laugh and dance with delight, happy as a young Indian in his ornaments.

    A wood-shaving may seem a poor plaything to a child with all the toyshops in London to pick and choose from, but it is really very curious and pretty. Bright and smooth to the touch, pencilled with delicate wavy lines, while in its spiral shape it reminds one of winding plants, and tendrils by means of which vines and creepers support themselves, and flowers with curling petals, and curled leaves and sea-shells and many other pretty natural objects.

    One day Martin ran into the house looking very flushed and joyous, holding up his pinafore with something heavy in it.

    What have you got now? cried his father and mother in a breath, getting up to peep at his treasure, for Martin was always fetching in the most curious out-of-the-way things to show them.

    My pretty shaving, said Martin proudly.

    When they looked they were amazed and horrified to see a spotted green snake coiled comfortably up in the pinafore. It didn't appear to like being looked at by them, for it raised its curious heart-shaped head and flicked its little red, forked tongue at them.

    His mother gave a great scream, and dropped the jug she had in her

    hand upon the floor, while John rushed off to get a big stick.

    "Drop it, Martin—drop the wicked snake before it stings you, and

    I'll soon kill it."

    Martin stared, surprised at the fuss they were making; then, still tightly holding the ends of his pinafore, he turned and ran out of the room and away as fast as he could go. Away went his father after him, stick in hand, and out of the gate into the thicket of tall wild sunflowers where Martin had vanished from sight. After hunting about for some time, he found the little run-away sitting on the ground among the weeds.

    Where's the snake? he cried.

    Gone! said Martin, waving his little hand around. I let it go and you mustn't look for it.

    John picked the child up in his arms and marched back to the room and popped him down on the floor, then gave him a good scolding. It's a mercy the poisonous thing didn't sting you, he said. You're a naughty little boy to play with snakes, because they're dangerous bad things, and you die if they bite you. And now you must go straight to bed; that's the only punishment that has any effect on such a harebrained little butterfly.

    Martin, puckering up his face for a cry, crept away to his little room. It was very hard to have to go to bed in the daytime when he was not sleepy, and

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