The Riverside Readers - Seventh Reader

There was once a boy - perhaps you have heard of him - whose great ambition was to be the hero of a story; or, as he used to say, to be "put into a book"; and one night he dreamed that he had been. But the dream was a bit addle-pated, as often dreams will be, and didn't quite carry out his ambition. For - oh, horrible! - instead of appearing as a hero, he found himself flattened out between the pages, while the covers of the book were pressing together as hard as they could.