Project Gutenberg's Famous Stories Every Child Should Know, by Various

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Title: Famous Stories Every Child Should Know

Author: Various

Editor: Hamilton Wright Mabie

Release Date: July 8, 2005 [EBook #16247]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: Old Man of the Mountain]

[Illustration: (Title Page)]

FAMOUS STORIES

Every Child Should Know

EDITED BY

Hamilton Wright Mabie

THE WHAT-EVERY-CHILD-SHOULD-KNOW-LIBRARY

_Published by_

DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & CO., INC., _for_

THE PARENTS' INSTITUTE, INC.

_Publishers of "The Parents' Magazine"_

9 EAST 40th STREET, NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE
COUNTRY LIFE PRESS. GARDEN CITY. N.Y.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The stories of "The Great Stone Face" and "The Snow Image" by
Nathaniel Hawthorne, are used in this volume by permission of Messrs.
Houghton, Mifflin & Company. Messrs. Little, Brown & Company have
granted permission for the republication of "The Man Without a
Country" by Edward Everett Hale.

INTRODUCTION

The group of stories brought together in this volume differ from
legends because they have, with one exception, no core of fact at the
centre, from myths because they make no attempt to personify or
explain the forces or processes of nature, from fairy stories because
they do not often bring on to the stage actors of a different nature
from ours. They give full play to the fancy as in "A Child's Dream of
a Star," "The King of the Golden River," "Undine," and "The Snow
Image"; but they are not poetic records of the facts of life, attempts
to shape those facts "to meet the needs of the imagination, the
cravings of the heart." In the Introduction to the book of Fairy Tales
in this series, those familiar and much loved stories which have been
repeated to children for unnumbered generations and will be repeated
to the end of time, are described as "records of the free and joyf