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Private: Problematic Classics

41 Foreign Children by Robert Louis Stevenson, Illus. by Jessie Wilcox Smith

Foreign Children from A Child’s Garden of Verses (1905)

Little Indian, Sioux or Crow,
Little frosty Eskimo,
Little Turk or Japanee,
Oh! don’t you wish that you were me?
You have seen the scarlet trees
And the lions over seas;
You have eaten ostrich eggs,
And turned the turtles off their legs.
Such a life is very fine,
But it’s not so nice as mine:
You must often, as you trod,
Have wearied not to be abroad.
You have curious things to eat,
I am fed on proper meat;
You must dwell beyond the foam,
But I am safe and live at home.
Little Indian, Sioux or Crow,
Little frosty Eskimo,
Little Turk or Japanee,
Oh! don’t you wish that you were me?
Color image of a child in a hat seated in front of several ethnically stereotyped children who stand on a raised dias; each "foreign" child is of a non-white ethnicity, thus visually emphasizing the default whiteness of the poem's perspective.

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