The Story of Noah's Ark

THE WARNING!



In the early days of the world lived the patriarch Noah, a good and venerable man whose years already numbered six hundred.

Now Noah was warned that a great flood was to come, which would pour down from the clouds and drown the whole earth. He straightway told his neighbors what was to happen, but they refused to believe, and scoffed at him, and said: "Let it rain."



BUILDING THE ARK:



Then Noah went his way, and set to work to build him a great ship, to be ready for the day of deluge.

And he laid the keel in the pasture fields, among the daisies; while the idlers came to look on and laugh at such folly—a ship for a rainy day!



Elmer Boyd Smith (May 31, 1860 October 5, 1943) was an American writer and illustrator of children's books and painter. Smith was born in Saint John, New Brunswick and studied art in Paris with Gustave Boulanger and Jules Joseph Lefebvre at the Académie Julian from 1881 to 1884, and also with H. Lefort for several years. In the early 1900s he moved to Wilton, Connecticut, where he spent the remainder of his life. He illustrated more than seventy books for both adults and children, beginning with My Village in 1896, written while he was living in France. His first children's book was The Story of Noah's Ark in 1905.