ABSTRACT
ONCE UPON A TIME there lived a little girl who had such a sweet temper that she seemed to be made of sugar and spice, like the little girl in the nursery rhyme. Her mother was very fond of her, and, in order to set off her beauty, made her a hood out of an old red flannel petticoat, in which she looked very pretty, and all the neighbors, in admiration, called her Little Red-Riding-Hood. Now, although she was a very good girl, her schoolfellows said that Little Red-Riding-Hood had one very naughty little fault, which no girl, little or big, ever had before in any age of the world: she was vain—just a little vain. They even whispered that she had been known to tie two old brass ear-rings to her ears with bits of cotton, pretending that her ears had been really pierced; and that more than once she had made up her dress into an unseemly bunch behind, pretending to have a Grecian bend! One day her mother called to her as she came home from school, and said, "I've been making some cheese-cakes and dough-nuts to-day, and, as I'm afraid your grandmother is ill, you shall take her some of those very digestible articles." She then stuck the bright red hood upon the back of her little girl's head, giving her a big basket full of cakes, and a lecture on the vanity of wearing gaudy colors. Now Little Red-Riding-Hood had a wonderful little lamb. He did not know how to 189spell as well as his young mistress, but that he was a clever critic any one could see, for whenever she read the intellectual stories out of her spelling-book, he showed his discernment by crying "Bah! bah!" He imitated his mistress, and was a vain little lamb. So, when Little Red-Riding-Hood had set out with her cakes, he looked about for some finery for himself, and finding a wolf's skin hanging up in the wardrobe (where, of course, such things always are), he put it on, and concluded that he looked best of all the lambs—ba-ing none! On the way to her grandmother's, as Little Red-Riding-Hood was trudging along, thinking how nice it must be to be an old lady and ill, with such a big basket of cakes as medicine, the little lamb overtook her, looking for all the world like a, great ugly wolf. When she saw this horrible sight, thinking it was a real wolf come to gobble up herself and the cakes, she tried to hide her face in the soft part of the stem of a tree, concluding very logically that, if she couldn't see the wolf, he couldn't see her. Having waited in this position for two seconds, expecting every moment to hear the wolf give his well known and terrible roar, her patience was naturally exhausted, and she turned round fully prepared to scream to any extent. The lamb, upon this, overjoyed at what he thought a recognition, for he thought she had "cut him dead," was so agitated that he could not open his mouth, and so, instead of expressing his feeling vocally, he kicked up his heels, and away he went—a merry somersault before the astonished eyes of the little maid. When Little Red-Riding-Hood saw this strange freak of the terrible beast, she was terribly frightened, and, seeing a street-car passing, she concluded it would be better and cheaper to ride, and certainly more pleasant to run the chance of being "taken in" at the hands of a conductor than to be taken in by the jaws of a wolf.
