endeavored to keep a distinct and unbroken thread
of authentic history. The chair is made to pass from one to another
of those personages of whom he thought it most desirable for the young
reader to have vivid and familiar ideas, and whose lives and actions
would best enable him to give picturesque sketches of the times. On its
sturdy oaken legs it trudges diligently from one scene to another, and
seems always to thrust itself in the way, with most benign complacency,
whenever an historical personage happens to be looking round for a seat.

There is certainly no method by which the shadowy outlines of departed
men and women can be made to assume the hues of life more effectually
than by connecting their images with the substantial and homely reality
of a fireside chair. It causes us to feel at once that these characters
of history had a private and familiar existence, and were not wholly
contained within that cold array of outward action which we are
compelled to receive as the adequate representation of their lives. If
this impression can be given, much is accomplished.

Setting aside Grandfather and his auditors, and excepting the adventures
of the chair, which form the machinery of the work, nothing in the
ensuing pages can be termed fictitious. The author, it is true, has
sometimes assumed the license of filling up the outline of history with
details for which he has none but imaginative authority, but which,
he hopes, do not violate nor give a false coloring to the truth. He
believes that, in this respect, his narrative will not be found to
convey ideas and impressions of which the reader may hereafter find it
necessary to purge his mind.

The author's great doubt is, whether he has succeeded in writing a book
which will be readable by the class for whom he intends it. To make a
lively and entertaining narrative for children, with such unmalleable
material as is presented by the sombre, stern, and rigid characteristics
of the Puritans and their descendants, is quite as difficult an attempt
as to manufacture delicate playthings out of the granite, rocks on which
New England is founded.

GRANDFATHER'S CHAIR.

PART I. 1620-1692.

CHAPTER I. GRANDFATHER AND THE CHILDREN AND THE CHAIR.

GRANDFATHER had been sitting in his old arm-chair all that pleasant
afternoon, while the children were pursuing their various sports far off
or near at hand, Sometimes you would have said, "Grandfather is asleep;"