Stories To Tell The Littlest Ones

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Foreword

This little book is the outgrowth of a custom in my house, known to the children as " Telling the Rabbit Story."

Ever since my little girl and boy were born, I have been in the habit of singing them rhymes or telling them stories every day, a while before sleepy-time. One of the earliest connected stories they ever heard was Beatrix Potter's exquisite little tale, " Peter Rabbit." They were very fond of this, and were much attracted by the name and the pictures of Peter himself. So it happened that they asked for more adventures of Peter Rabbit, and I fell into the way of introducing the little hero into many of my inventions, until at last no story was complete if it did not begin: " Once when Peter Rabbit was — "

For two years the story hour at my house was always called the " Rabbit

story." "Mother, will you be home for the ' Rabbit story' ? " the children used to say, when I went out.

Gradually other loves have taken their place in the home-story world, and I have told my boy and girl many tales of many kinds, true, fairy, and "foolish," as they call humorous stories, but they still love the one that begins with " Peter Rabbit."

Once in a while, in the long series of days, some happy inspiration has given me a better thought than usual, and a real story has popped out of my mouth in place of the mediocre inventions of habit. These few real stories have been retold " by request" of the original audience, and told again to larger audiences many times. It has seemed to me that the best of them might prove of value to other teachers and mothers of very little children, for the demand is continuous, and the supply of material suitable for such tiny hearers is exceedingly small.

A few of these stones are my own adaptations from old or foreign tales, as the reader will note in the following pages. But the larger number are entirely original, and grew spontaneously out of the mood of the hour.

I do not claim any wonderful qualities for the little stories so made and gathered. Very young children have liked them, and I have been willing that my own very young children should hear them. The latter is an acid test which has counted out many a famous old story, and the former disposes of all too many modern ones. So I hope that these may prove useful to grown-up friends and joyous to little boys and girls.

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Acknowledgments

For the Swabian verses I have to thank my husband, who heard the originals in childhood from his grandfather. The first telling of "The Little White Boat" and the inspiration for a number of other stories came from the same interested source.

The spirit and outline of the two apple stories I owe to Mr. James H. Bowditch, the noted landscape architect. While I was very ill he told the little adventures to my husband, to tell to me, for the whiling away of a heavy time; and I have made them into stories with his consent. I regret that I cannot fully transmit in them the rare savor of gentle humor and kindly philosophy that Mr. Bowditch's personality infused into the original.

The Scotch rhymes with their music were taught my children by Miss Jessie Blaine, their kindest of nurses, and a shining example of the national strength and wholesomeness of character. She learned the funny bits literally at her mother's knee, and in passing them on to my children, used the quaint steps and gestures which had come to hers from a still earlier mother. The rhymes are undoubtedly only fragments, but even as such seem to have a perennial charm for the " littlest ones."
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