Project Gutenberg's Queer Stories for Boys and Girls, by Edward Eggleston

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Title: Queer Stories for Boys and Girls

Author: Edward Eggleston

Release Date: November 22, 2006 [EBook #19896]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Queer Stories

For Boys and Girls

BY

EDWARD EGGLESTON

AUTHOR OF "THE HOOSIER SCHOOLMASTER," "THE HOOSIER SCHOOL-BOY," ETC.

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1884

Copyright, 1884, by

EDWARD EGGLESTON

TROW'S
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY,
NEW YORK.

PREFACE.

The stories here reprinted include nearly all of those which I have
written for children in a vein that entitles them to rank as "Queer
Stories," that is, stories not entirely realistic in their setting but
appealing to the fancy, which is so marked a trait of the minds of boys
and girls. "Bobby and the Key-hole" appeared eight or nine years ago in
_St. Nicholas_, and has never before been printed in book form. The
others were written earlier for juvenile periodicals of wide repute in
their time--periodicals that have now gone the way of almost all young
people's magazines, to the land of forgetfulness. Although I recall with
pleasure the fact that these little tales enjoyed a considerable
popularity when they first appeared, I might just as well as not have
called them "The Unlucky Stories." In two or three forms some of the
stories that form this collection have appeared in book covers in years
past, but always to meet with disaster that was no fault of theirs. Two
little books tha