no glimpse. In order to bring _Lady Anne_ into
this collection I have had here and there to condense a few pages, but I
have touched nothing essential: the sweet little narrative is only
shortened, never altered. _Lady Anne_ was first published in 1823.

With 'Captain Murderer,' which ends the book, we come to another story
by a novelist, this time a man of genius, Charles Dickens. The agreeably
gruesome trifle occurs in the essay in _The Uncommercial Traveller_ on
'Nurses' Stories,' and it was told to the little Dickens by a dreadful
girl named Sarah, who chilled him also with the dark history of Chips,
the ship's carpenter, and the rat of the Devil. The story of Chips is
better than the story of Captain Murderer, but I do not care for the
responsibility of laying it before you. The Captain may be held to be
forbidding enough, but he is, all the same, well within the nursery's
traditions of acceptable villainy, being only a variant upon Bluebeard
and the giant who fed upon bread made with the bone-flour of Englishmen;
whereas the story of Chips introduces infernal elements and makes rats
too horrible to be thought about. So I feel; but if anyone complains of
the grimness of the Captain I shall have, I fear, only a very poor
defence.

E. V. L.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Dicky Random; or, Good-Nature is nothing without Good
Conduct; Anon. 1

The Months; Anon. 15

Jemima Placid; or, The Advantage of Good-Nature; Anon. 23

Two Trials: I. Sally Delia; Anon. 48
II. Harry Lenox; Anon. 58

Prince Life; by G. P. R. James 72

The Farm-Yard Journal; by the Aikins 90

The Fruits of Disobedience; or, The Kidnapped Child; Anon. 98

The Rose's Breakfast; Anon. 114

The Three Cakes; by Armand Berquin 128

Amendment; Anon. 136

Scourhill's Adventures; Anon. 162

The Journal; by Priscilla Wakefield 172

Ellen and George; or, The Game at Cricket; by A. C. Mant 181

Waste Not, Want Not; or, Two Strings to Your Bow; b