Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

     The veritable “Mary [who] had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow,” visited the Old South spinning bee at Boston Wednesday afternoon and told the ladies present the story of the lamb. When she was 9 years old and living on a farm, one morning she went out into the barn, where she found two little lambs, one of them nearly dead. So she took it into the house and sat up all night nursing it with catnip tea. The next morning the lamb could stand on its feet, and grew stronger every day. Owing to her loving care the lamb became so attached to Mary that it followed her about and one day to school, where she had it under the desk, so that none of the children knew it was in school until Mary was called up to recite. Then the laamb came out from its hiding place, and made the children laugh and shout, so that the teacher was obliged to turn it out. The poem was written by a friend of Mary’s [the venerable Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale, who has just retired from the editorship of Godfey’s Lady Book] soon after the lamb’s visit to the school-room. Mary was married many years since, and lives near Boston. She says she will come again to the spinning bee some afternoon. She took in some of the first fleece of her little lamb, and it is now for sale at the spinning bee.