Some of the building-blocks were bought for a child who knew how to make all sorts of things with them: barns and bridges and palaces and churches. He was always thinking of something new to build. Once it was a tunnel for a train to go through, and another time it was a steamboat; and one day he said he would build a tower as tall as he was.
“Don’t you think that will be splendid?” he asked his mother.
“Yes, indeed,” said she, “and hard, too.”
So the little boy set to work piling the blocks one on top of another. Soon the tower was knee-high, waist-high, chest-high; that was just the way the little boy and his mother measured it.
“It will soon be as tall as I am,” said the little boy, but he had hardly spoken when down the blocks fell!
The little boy thought that the wind which was coming through the nursery window had blown the tower down, and his mother thought it might have fallen because he had been in such a hurry, but, anyway, the little boy said he would build it up again, and make it stand, too.
Up, up, up the tower climbed.
“It’s chin-high now. Look! Look! Mother,” he called, but before Mother could turn her head, down came the blocks!
The little boy began to think that he could not build such a high tower after all, but his mother still thought he could. Even though the blocks had fallen twice, she believed he could do it.
“As tall as I am?” asked the little boy.
“As tall as you are,” said his mother.
So the little boy set to work once more piling the blocks one on top of another and taking pains with every one. Soon the tower was knee-high, waist-high, chest-high, chin-high, as high as the little boy’s nose! But it didn’t fall, not even when he put one more block on it and another one still. And then,
“It’s taller than I am,” called the little boy. Hurray!
He thought the tower was the very finest thing he had ever built. So did his mother.
