A Child's Corner Book Stories Author:Richard Rowe Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: UP IN A BALLOON. HERE was great excitement in Butter- cupbury. For the first time in the course of its long existence that pleasant little country town beheld... more » a balloon. A few Buttercupburyans had been up to London, but it did not follow from that that they had seen a balloon—although they said they had, and gave themselves blase airs in consequence. At any rate, the vast majority of the Buttercupburyans (if one may talk about a vast majority under such circumstances) had never seen any balloon, but a fire-balloon, except in a picture ; and now that they had got the chance of doing so, they availed themselves of it with unsophisticated enjoyment. They assembled, if not 'in their thousands,' at least in their scores, at the little railway station (even Buttercupbury had a railway station) to welcomethe arrival of the great Mr. Brown from London. The distinguished aeronaut was to be handsomely paid for his trouble, but that made no difference in the opinion of his welcomers. They thought that he had done them great honour in consenting to make an ascent from Buttercupbury. Sooth to say, the inhabitants of Buttercupbury were rather hard up in the way of public amusements. They had a little theatre, but for fifty-one weeks in the year a clothier and hatter made a warehouse of it, only very partially removing his wares when an itinerant lecturer on astronomy hired it for the exhibition of his orrery. Circuses and Wild Beast Shows visited Buttercup- bury in very eccentric comet-like orbits—Penny Readings had not been invented in those days— and Buttercupbury, when its work was done, often felt bored. Its latest public amusement, before Mr. Brown arrived, was when, some months before, Signor Fantasticoto, with an eye to subsequent sixpences and coppers (which were liberally poured ...« less