The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gypsy's Cousin Joy, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

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Title: Gypsy's Cousin Joy

Author: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

Release Date: June 21, 2006 [EBook #18646]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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GYPSY'S COUSIN JOY

By
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

New York
Dodd, Mead and Company

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[Illustration]

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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by

GRAVES & YOUNG,

in the Clerk's Office for the District Court of Massachusetts

Copyright, 1895, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward.

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PREFACE.

Having been asked to write a preface to the new edition of the Gypsy
books, I am not a little perplexed. I was hardly more than a girl
myself, when I recorded the history of this young person; and I find it
hard, at this distance, to photograph her as she looks, or ought to look
to-day. She does not sit still long enough to be "taken." I see a lively
girl in pretty short dresses and very long stockings,--quite a Tom-boy,
if I remember rightly. She paddles a raft, she climbs a tree, she skates
and tramps and coasts, she is usually very muddy, and a little torn.
There is apt to be a pin in her gathers; but there is sure to be a laugh
in her eyes. Wherever there is mischief, there is Gypsy. Yet, wherever
there is fun, and health, and hope, and happiness,--and I think,
wherever there is truthfulness and generosity,--there is Gypsy, too.

And now, the publishers tell me that Gypsy is thirty years old, and that
girls who were not so much as born when I knew the little lady, are her
readers and her friends to-day.

Thirty years old? In