The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, by L. Frank Baum

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Recording by Kristin LeMoine, www.greenkri.com

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, by L. Frank Baum.

1. Burzee

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?



2. The Child of the Forest

Once, so long ago our great-grandfathers could scarcely have heard it
mentioned, there lived within the great Forest of Burzee a wood-nymph
named Necile. She was closely related to the mighty Queen Zurline, and
her home was beneath the shade of a widespreading oak. Once every
year, on Budding Day, when the trees put forth their new buds, Necile
held the Golden Chalice of Ak to the lips of the Queen, who drank
therefrom to the prosperity of the Forest. So you see she was a nymph
of some importance, and, moreover, it is said she was highly regarded
because of her beauty and grace.

When she was created she could not have told; Queen Zurline could not
have told; the great Ak himself could not have told. It was long ago
when the world was new and nymphs were needed to guard the forests and
to minister to the wants of the young trees. Then, on some day not
remembered, Necile sprang into being; radiant, lovely, straight and
slim as the sapling she was created to guard.

Her hair was the color that lines a chestnut-bur; her eyes were blue in
the sunlight and purple in the shade; her cheeks bloomed with the faint
pink that edges the clouds at sunset; her lips were full red, pouting
and sweet. For costume she adopted oak-leaf green; all the wood-nymphs
dress in that color and know no other so desirable. Her dainty feet
were sandal-clad, while her head remained bare of covering other than
her silken tresses.

Necile's duties were few and simple. She kept hurtful weeds from
growing beneath her trees and sapping the earth-food required by her
charges. She frightened away the Gadgols, who took evil delight in
flying against the tree-trunks and wounding them so that they drooped
and died from the poisonous contact. In dry seasons she carried water
from the brooks and pools and moistened the roots of her thirsty
dependents.