Dorothy felt as if she were going up in a balloon. The house whirled around two or three times and rose slowly through the air. When she was halfway across the room there came a great shriek from the wind, and the house shook so hard that she lost her footing and sat down suddenly upon the floor. Dorothy caught Toto at last and started to follow her aunt. Aunt Em, badly frightened, threw open the trap door in the floor and climbed down the ladder into the small, dark hole. Toto jumped out of Dorothy’s arms and hid under the bed, and the girl started to get him. One glance told her of the danger close at hand. “I’ll go look after the stock.” Then he ran toward the sheds where the cows and horses were kept.Īunt Em dropped her work and came to the door. “There’s a cyclone coming, Em,” he called to his wife. There now came a sharp whistling in the air from the south, and as they turned their eyes that way they saw ripples in the grass coming from that direction also. Aunt Em was washing the dishes.įrom the far north they heard a low wail of the wind, and Uncle Henry and Dorothy could see where the long grass bowed in waves before the coming storm. Dorothy stood in the door with Toto in her arms, and looked at the sky too. Uncle Henry sat upon the doorstep and looked anxiously at the sky, which was even grayer than usual. Toto played all day long, and Dorothy played with him, and loved him dearly.
Toto was not gray he was a little black dog, with long silky hair and small black eyes that twinkled merrily on either side of his funny, wee nose. It was Toto that made Dorothy laugh, and saved her from growing as gray as her other surroundings. He was gray also, from his long beard to his rough boots, and he looked stern and solemn, and rarely spoke. He worked hard from morning till night and did not know what joy was. 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 to laugh at. She was thin and gaunt, and never smiled now. 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. When Aunt Em came there to live she was a young, pretty wife. 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. 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. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all directions. When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. It was reached by a trap door in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole. 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. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner. 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. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles.
#WIZARD OF OZ TORNADO UPDATE#
You should visit Browse Happy and update your internet browser today!ĭorothy 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. The embedded audio player requires a modern internet browser.
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