TOM THUMB.

LONG time ago a ploughman wished for a child, even

if it was no bigger than his thumb. So one day

when he went home he found his wife nursing a wee baby,
that grew to the size of his thumb and then never grew
any more. One day while his mother was making a plum-
pudding, Tom fell into the bowl, and his mother stirred him
up and put him in the pot. The hot water made him kick,
and his mother took out the pudding and gave it to a pass-
ing tinker. Tom cried out “Hello!” when the tinker
sneezed, which so scared him that he threw the pudding
into a field and it tumbled to pieces. Tom crept out and
went home to his mother, who was glad to see him, though
he was all over a crust of dough and plums. One day he
was nearly drowned in the milk-jug ; another time he was
lost in the salt-box ; and when he went with his mother into
the fields to milk the cows, she tied him to a thistle with a
piece of thread, for fear he should be blown away by the
wind. Soon after, a cow ate up the thistle and swallowed

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