Fairy Tale Junction

A Compendium of Fairy Tales I remember
...for my children

The Story of Peter Pan

 

From The Young Folks Treasury 1919 edition

ONCE upon a time there were three children named Wendy, John, and Michael, who lived with their father and mother in London. One evening the father and mother were invited to a party, and the mother, after lighting the dim lamp in the nursery and kissing them good-night, went away. That evening a little boy whose name was Peter Pan climbed in through the window. He was a curious little fellow, very conceited, very forgetful, and yet very lovable. There came flitting in through the window with him his fairy, whose name was Tinker Bell. Peter Pan woke all the children up, and after he had sprinkled fairy dust on their shoulders, he took them away to the Neverland, where he lived with a family of lost boys. Tinker Bell was jealous of the little girl Wendy, and she hurried ahead of Peter Pan and persuaded the boys that Wendy was a bird who might do them harm, and so one of the boys shot here with his bow and arrow.

When Peter Pan came and found Wendy lying lifeless upon the ground in the woods he was very angry, but he was also very quick-witted. So he told the boys that if they would build a house around Wendy he was sure that she would be better. So they hurried to collect everything they had out of which they could make a house. Though she was not yet strong enough to talk, they thought perhaps she might sing the kind of house she would like to have, so Wendy sang softly this little verse:

"I wish I had a pretty house,
The littlest ever seen,
With funny little red walls
And roof of mossy green."

When the house was done Peter Pan took John's hat for the chimney, and the little house was so pleased to have such a capital chimney that smoke at once began to come out through the hat. All that night Peter Pan walked up and down in front of Wand's house, to watch over her and keep her from danger while she slept.

All these children lived in an underground cave, and the next day, when Wendy got well, they all went down into the cave and Wendy agreed to be their mother and Peter their father. They had many good times together. they also had some exciting adventures with the red-skins and with a pirate named Captain Hook and his crew. After a time the red-skins became their friends, and Peter rescued his family from the pirates' ship.

One day Wendy and her brothers realized that they had been away so long that perhaps their mother had forgotten them and shut the window of the nursery so that they could not get back. They decided to hurry home. When they reached home Peter Pan was before them, and he closed the window so that they could not get back. But when he heard the children's mother singing such a sad song inside, his heart was made tender and he opened the window and the children crept back safely into their mother's arms. Wand's mother invited Peter Pan to stay and be her child, but Peter was so afraid that he would have to go to school and grow up and be a man that he went back to his home in fairy-land.

Wendy promised to go once a year and stay a few days with Peter Pan and clean house and mend his clothes. Let us picture them in the little house that was built for Wendy, which the fairies had put up in the branches of a pine-tree. The birds are singing in their nests and in the branches, and far below the clouds you can see the land and the sea. Wendy is sewing for Peter and Peter Pan is playing his pipes while she works. When night comes the woods are full of flashing lights like little stars, because the fairies are flitting around the house where Peter and Wendy live, and are singing to them as they go to sleep.

In a few days Wendy will go back to John and Michael to tell them what a good time she had on her visit in the little house in the woods.

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