PREFACE
The stories which are given in the following pages are for the most
part those which I have found to be best liked by the children to whom I
have told these and others. I have tried to reproduce the form in which I
actually tell them,--although that inevitably varies with every repetition,--
feeling that it would be of greater value to another story-teller than a more
closely literary form. For the same reason, I have confined my statements
of theory as to method, to those which reflect my own experience; my
"rules" were drawn from introspection and retrospection, at the urging of
others, long after the instinctive method they exemplify had become
habitual.
These facts are the basis of my hope that the book may be of use to
those who have much to do with children.
It would be impossible, in the space of any pardonable preface, to
name the teachers, mothers, and librarians who have given me hints and
helps during the past few years of story-telling. But I cannot let these
pages go to press without recording my especial indebtedness to the few
persons without whose interested aid the little book would scarcely have
come to be. They are: Mrs Elizabeth Young Rutan, at whose generous
instance I first enlarged my own field of entertaining story-telling to
include hers, of educational narrative, and from whom I had many
valuable suggestions at that time; Miss Ella L. Sweeney, assistant
superintendent of schools, Providence, R.I., to whom I owe exceptional
opportunities for investigation and experiment; Mrs Root, children\'s
librarian of Providence Public Library, and Miss Alice M. Jordan, Boston
Public Library, children\'s room, to whom I am indebted for much gracious
and efficient aid.