Excerpt from Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets: And Other Tales Crow's mother, Tempest, had been a worker in her better days, but she had grown fatter and fatter until now She was so lazy and broad that her chief pleasure seemed to be sitting in her front door and gossiping with her neighbors over the fence, or in abusing or praising little Solomon, according to her mood. Tempest had never been very honest. When, in the Old days, she had hired out as cook and carried her dinner home at night, the basket on her arm had usually held enough for her self and Crow and a pig and the chickens - with some to give away. She had not meant Crow to understand, but the little fellow was Wide awake, and his mother was his pattern. 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.