Pee-Wee Harris Adrift by Percy Keese Fitzhugh
page 73 of 161 (45%)
page 73 of 161 (45%)
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It was pleasant sitting about on this new and original desert island which combined all the attractions of wild life with substantial safety. Only its overlapping edges could wash away and as these melted and disappeared the island gradually assumed a square and orderly conformation; its bleak and lonely coast formed a tidy square and looked like some truant back yard off on a holiday. What it lost in rugged grandeur it made up in modern neatness and seemed indeed a desert Island with all improvements. Nestling within its stalwart and water-tight timbers it presented a scene of varied beauty. Grasshoppers disported gayly upon its rugged surface, occasionally leaping inadvertently into the surrounding surf and kicking their ungainly legs in the sparkling water. A pair of adventurous robins that had refused to desert the fugitive peninsula were chirping in the little blossom-laden tree and one of them came down and perched upon the traffic sign to prune his feathers before retiring. Savage beetles roamed wild over the isle, and wild angleworms, disturbed by the late upheaval, squirmed about in quest of new homes. The vegetation on the island appeared in gay profusion, reminding one of the Utopian scenes of fragrant beauty which delighted the eyes of the bold explorers who first landed on the shores of Florida. Yellow dandelions dotted the greensward, purple violets peeped up through the overgrown grass, and a rusty tin can, memento of some prehistoric fisherman perhaps, lay near the shore. Not even the geometrical perfection of the island detracted from its primitive and |
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