The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Father's Dragon, by Ruth Stiles Gannett

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Title: My Father's Dragon

Author: Ruth Stiles Gannett

Illustrator: Ruth Chrisman Gannett

Release Date: September 18, 2009 [EBook #30017]

Language: English

Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Transcriber's Note:

Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

MY FATHER'S DRAGON

STORY BY

RUTH STILES GANNETT

ILLUSTRATIONS BY

RUTH CHRISMAN GANNETT

RANDOM HOUSE . NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT 1948 BY RANDOM HOUSE, INC.

For My

FATHER

1.	My Father Meets the Cat	9
2.	My Father Runs Away	15
3.	My Father Finds the Island	22
4.	My Father Finds the River	31
5.	My Father Meets Some Tigers	39
6.	My Father Meets A Rhinoceros	48
7.	My Father Meets A Lion	56
8.	My Father Meets A Gorilla	63
9.	My Father Makes A Bridge	73
10.	My Father Finds the Dragon	79

Chapter One

MY FATHER MEETS THE CAT

One cold rainy day when my father was a little boy, he met an old alley cat on his street. The cat was very drippy and uncomfortable so my father said, "Wouldn't you like to come home with me"

This surprised the cat—she had never before met anyone who cared about old alley cats—but she said, "I'd be very much obliged if I could sit by a warm furnace, and perhaps have a saucer of milk."

"We have a very nice furnace to sit by," said my father, "and I'm sure my mother has an extra saucer of milk."

My father and the cat became good friends but my father's mother was very upset about the cat. She hated cats, particularly ugly old alley cats. "Elmer Elevator," she said to my father, "if you think I'm going to give that cat a saucer of milk, you're very wrong. Once you start feeding stray alley cats you might as well expect to feed every stray in town, and I am not going to do it!"

This made my father very sad, and he apologized to the cat because his mother had been so rude. He told the cat to stay anyway, and that somehow he would bring her a saucer of milk each day. My father fed the cat for three weeks, but one day his mother found the cat's saucer in the cellar and she was extremely angry. She whipped my father and threw the cat out the door, but later on my father sneaked out and found the cat. Together they went for a walk in the park and tried to think of nice things to talk about. My father said, "When I grow up I'm going to have an airplane. Wouldn't it be wonderful to fly just anywhere you might think of!"