Front Matter

Dedicated to the memory of my Mother and Father, whose loving sympathy with all that gave me joy made my childhood ideal.

Preface

"Pipe a song about a lamb." "Tell a story about a pony." The plea of universal childhood is for joyful "intimacy with the life of Nature." Poets, painters, writers, the lovers of children of all times and nations, have responded to this childish longing, but it remained for Friedrich Froebel to interpret it, and to recognize its spiritual value. "Each child has a vision of his own inmost life in the mirror of Nature," he writes in his commentary on the Play of Beckoning the Chickens, and again in the motto for The Little Maiden and the Stars:—

His Mother Play Book is full of Nature. We find the child pictured there playing in field and meadow, wading in running brook, plucking flowers, calling chickens, watching pigeons, living with Nature, and growing toward God.

Alas that there are children to whom such joys are denied, but even in them, the little dwellers in city streets, we find this love of Nature strong whenever we give them opportunity to manifest it. I was once in a kindergarten of city children when a homely gray kitten strayed into their midst. Oh, the lighting up of little faces, the reaching out of little hands, the sympathetic interest that thrilled their little hearts at the sight!

"Pipe a song about a lamb." My stories of the happy outdoor world were written in response to the needs of the little children with whom my lot is cast. They were suggested to me by the Mother-Plays, and I have striven, though faultily, to keep them true to Froebel's ideals for childhood—Truth, Simplicity, and Purity.

The story writer, however, has but small part in the art of story making for the young child. It is the story teller who gives life and glow to the story, and it is with the hope that you who tell my simple tales will supply their deficiencies and make them sweet that I am sending this little volume forth.