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                   The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

                        by L. Frank Baum

                             Contents

                       --Introduction--           
              1.  The Cyclone                         
              2.  The Council with the Munchkins      
              3.  How Dorothy Saved the Scarecrow     
              4.  The Road Through the Forest         
              5.  The Rescue of the Tin Woodman       
              6.  The Cowardly Lion                   
              7.  The Journey to the Great Oz         
              8.  The Deadly Poppy Field              
              9.  The Queen of the Field Mice         
             10.  The Guardian of the Gates           
             11.  The Emerald City of Oz              
             12.  The Search for the Wicked Witch     
             13.  The Rescue
             14.  The Winged Monkeys                  
             15.  The Discovery of Oz the Terrible    
             16.  The Magic Art of the Great Humbug   
             17.  How the Balloon Was Launched        
             18.  Away to the South                   
             19.  Attacked by the Fighting Trees      
             20.  The Dainty China Country            
             21.  The Lion Becomes the King of Beasts 
             22.  The Country of the Quadlings        
             23.  Glinda The Good Witch Grants Dorothy's Wish
             24.  Home Again                          

                           Introduction

    Folklore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood
through the ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and
instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly unreal.
The winged fairies of Grimm and Andersen have brought more happiness to
childish hearts than all other human creations.

    Yet the old time fairy tale, having served for generations,
may now be classed as "historical" in the children's library; for
the time has come for a series of newer "wonder tales" in which
the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together
with all the horrible and blood-curdling incidents devised by
their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale.  Modern
education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only
entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all
disagreeable incident.

    Having this thought in mind, the story of "The Wonderful
Wizard of Oz" was written solely to please children of today.  It
aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment
and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.

L. Frank Baum

Chicago, April, 1900.

                    THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ

                          1.  The Cyclone

    Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with
Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's
wife.  Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be
carried by wagon many miles.  There were four walls, a floor and a
roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking
cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four
chairs, and the beds.  Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in
one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner.  There was
no garret at all, and no cellar--except a small hole dug in the
ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case
one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any
building in its path.  It was reached by a trap door in the middle
of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole.

    When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could
see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side.  Not a tree
nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to
the edge of the sky in all directions.  The sun had baked the
plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it.
Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of
the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen
everywhere.  Once the house had been painted, but the sun
blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the
house was as dull and gray as everything else.

    When Aunt Em came there to live she was a young, pretty wife.
The sun and wind had changed her, too.  They had taken the sparkle
from her eyes and left them a sober gray; they had taken the red
from her cheeks and lips, and they were gray also.  She was thin
and gaunt, and never smiled now.  When Dorothy, who was an orphan,
first came to her, Aunt Em had been so startled by the child's
laughter that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart
whenever Dorothy's merry voice reached her ears; and she still
looked at the little girl with wonder that she could find anything