And the Yeah, Welcome back everyone to one thousand one classic short stories and tales. This is your host John

Hagenorn and it's great to be with you today. We have two stories for you today,

one, Bread and two, that Iowa town.

Today's short story, Bred by Ellis Parker Butler,

is a selection from the 1917 book, Prairie Gold.

We have featured a story titled Prairie Gold, some Iowa memories two years ago, and it

continues to be one of our most popular stories, so I thought it might be a good time to

offer another.

What made this book Prairie Gold so unique was that when America

enter World War I on April 4th, 1917, a lot of Midwestern boys signed up and other people

of Iowa thought it might be good if they could take a

book along with them which would remind them of what they had left behind so they put

out the word for all interested writers in Iowa to contribute and they did in large numbers and this is one of those

contributions and now bred by Ellis Parker Butler. They came to Iowa in a prairie schooner with a rounded canvas top and where the canvas was brought together at the rear of the wagon, it left a little window above the tailboard. On the floor of the wagon was a heap of hay and an old quilt out of which the matted cotton protruded.

And on this, Martha and Eben used to sit looking out of the window.

Martha was a little over two years old,

and Eben was four.

They crossed the Mississippi at Muscotine on the ferry.

It was about noon and old Hodges, the crew of the fairy, who was as crooked as the branches of an English oak because the huge branch of an English oak had fallen on him when he was young, took his dinner from his tin pale. He looked up and saw the two eager little vases.

Want a bite to eat?

He asked, and he peeled apart two thick slices of bread,

thickly buttered, and handed them up to the two youngsters.

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