The Lumber Room
Complete textNicholas is excluded from a special outing as punishment for a breakfast dispute. Left behind with an aunt determined to control his movements, he turns his attention toward the forbidden lumber-room, where neglected objects promise a richer experience than the approved treat.
Continue readingAbout The Lumber Room
Saki gives the child's precise logic an advantage over adult certainty. The contrast between an imaginative response to objects and a punitive approach to rules makes the comedy unusually pointed. What counts as a reward or punishment changes according to who is looking, and authority proves less observant than it imagines.
Reading focus
Enjoy a compact contest between a child's resourceful imagination and an adult's self-satisfied management of punishment and pleasure.
This reading edition contains 2,195 words in 1 original section. Read the text online with adjustable type and three colour themes, or keep a printable PDF.
Author: Saki. Language: English. Reading edition: 28 October 2026.
Opening excerpt
The children were to be driven, as a special treat, to the sands at Jagborough. Nicholas was not to be of the party; he was in disgrace. Only that morning he had refused to eat his wholesome bread-and-milk on the seemingly frivolous ground that there was a frog in it. Older and wiser and better people had told him that there could not possibly be a frog in his bread-and-milk and that he was not to talk nonsense; he continued, nevertheless, to talk what seemed the veriest nonsense, and described with much detail the colouration and markings of the alleged frog. The dramatic part of the incident was that there really was a frog in Nicholas’ basin of bread-and-milk; he had put it there…
Contents
All sectionsReading & download help
Is this the complete The Lumber Room?
This edition contains the complete English literary text, with 1 section and 2,195 words. This reading edition preserves the checked English text and its section order. No study notes have been added.
Which PDF should I choose?
A4 is designed for 210 × 297 mm paper; US Letter for 8.5 × 11 inch paper. Both contain the same complete text, selectable text and section bookmarks.
Can I read without signing up?
Yes. Online reading and both PDFs are free. Reading settings and progress stay on this device.