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Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (Version 4)

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<h1> The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus </h1> <h3> by </h3> <h2> L. Frank Baum </h2> <h2> Contents </h2> <h3> YOUTH </h3> 1. Burzee 2. The Child of the Forest 3. The Adoption 4. Claus 5. The Master Woodsman 6. Claus Discovers Humanity 7. Claus Leaves the Forest <h3> MANHOOD </h3> 1. The Laughing Valley 2. How Claus Made the First Toy 3. How the Ryls Colored the Toys 4. How Little Mayrie Became Frightened 5. How Bessie Blithesome Came to the Laughing Valley 6. The Wickedness of the Awgwas 7. The Great Battle Between Good and Evil 8. The First Journey with the Reindeer 9. "Santa Claus!" 10. Christmas Eve 11. How the First Stockings Were Hung by the Chimneys 12. The First Christmas Tree <h3> OLD AGE </h3> 1. The Mantle of Immortality 2. When the World Grew Old 3. The Deputies of Santa Claus <h3> YOUTH </h3> <h3> 1. Burzee </h3> Have you heard of the great Forest of Burzee? Nurse used to sing of it when I was a child. She sang of the big tree-trunks, standing close together, with their roots intertwining below the earth and their branches intertwining above it; of their rough coating of bark and queer, gnarled limbs; of the bushy foliage that roofed the entire forest, save where the sunbeams found a path through which to touch the ground in little spots and to cast weird and curious shadows over the mosses, the lichens and the drifts of dried leaves. The Forest of Burzee is mighty and grand and awesome to those who steal beneath its shade. Coming from the sunlit meadows into its mazes it seems at first gloomy, then pleasant, and afterward filled with never-ending delights. For hundreds of years it has flourished in all its magnificence, the silence of its inclosure unbroken save by the chirp of busy chipmunks, the growl of wild beasts and the songs of birds. Yet Burzee has its inhabitants—for all this. Nature peopled it in the beginning with Fairies, Knooks, Ryls and Nymphs. As long as the Forest stands it will be a home, a refuge and a playground to these sweet immortals, who revel undisturbed in its depths. Civilization has never yet reached Burzee. Will it ever, I wonder? <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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