The Project Gutenberg EBook of Once on a Time, by A. A. Milne

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Title: Once on a Time

Author: A. A. Milne

Illustrator: Charles Robinson

Release Date: January 11, 2009 [EBook #27771]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONCE ON A TIME ***

Produced by K Hindall <kkh2@cornell.edu> from a PDF at
archive.org
<http://www.archive.org/details/onceontime00miln> and
edited by Padraig O hIceadha.

Transcriber's Note:

This text was typed for Project Gutenberg by K Hindall
<kkh2_AT_cornell.edu> from a PDF at archive.org
<http://www.archive.org/details/onceontime00miln> and edited by
Padraig O hIceadha.

ONCE ON A TIME

_By_

A.A. Milne

DECORATED

BY CHARLES

ROBINSON

GROSSET & DUNLAP

Publishers New York

By Arrangement with G. P. Putnam's Sons

Copyright, 1922

by

A. A. Milne

PREFACE

This book was written in 1915, for the amusement of my wife and myself
at a time when life was not very amusing; it was published at the end
of 1917; was reviewed, if at all, as one of a parcel, by some brisk
uncle from the Tiny Tots Department; and died quietly, without
seriously detracting from the interest which was being taken in the
World War, then in progress.

It may be that the circumstances in which the book was written have
made me unduly fond of it. When, as sometimes happens, I am
introduced to a stranger who starts the conversation on the right
lines by praising, however insincerely, my books, I always say, "But
you have not read the best one." Nine times out of ten it is so. The
tenth takes a place in the family calendar; St. Michael or St. Agatha,
as the case may be, a red-letter or black-letter saint, according to
whether the book was bought or borrowed. But there are few such
saints, and both my publisher and I have the feeling (so common to
publishers and authors) that there ought to be more. So here comes
the book again, in a new dress, with new decorations, yet much, as far
as I am concerned, the same book, making the same appeal to me; but,
let us hope, a new appeal, this time, to others.

For whom, then, is the book in