eople _do_, but what they _are_ that makes them
interesting. True enough, Lucy, Emily and Henry led what we should call
nowadays very dull lives; but they were by no means dull little people
for all that. We shall find them very living and real when we make
acquaintance with them. They tore their clothes, and lost their pets,
and wanted the best things, and slapped each other when they disagreed.
They had their good times and their bad times, their fun and frolic and
their scrapes and naughtiness, just as children had long before they
were born and are having now, long, long after they are dead.

In fact, as we get to know them--and, I hope, to love them--we shall
realize, perhaps with wonder, how very like they are to the children of
to-day. If they took us by the hand and led us to their playroom, or
into "Henry's arbour" under the great trees, we should make friends
with them in five minutes, even though they wear long straight skirts
down to their ankles and straw bonnets burying their little faces, and
Henry is attired in a frock and pinafore, albeit he is eight years old.
We should have glorious games with them, following the fleet Lucy
running like a hare; we should kiss them when we went away, and reckon
them ever after among our friends.

And so, as we follow the _History of the Fairchild Family_ we shall
understand, better than we have yet done, how children are children
everywhere, and very much the same from generation to generation.
Knowing Lucy and Emily and Henry will help us to feel more sympathy
with other children of bygone days, the children of our history
books--with pretty Princess Amelia, and the little Dauphin in the
Bastille, with sweet Elizabeth Stuart, the "rose-bud born in snow" of
Carisbrook Castle, and a host of others. They were _real_ children too,
who had real treats and real punishments, real happy days and sad ones.
They felt and thought and liked and disliked much the same things as we
do now. We stretch out our hands to them across the misty centuries,
and hail them our companions and playmates.

* * * * *

Few people nowadays, even among those who know the _Fairchild Family_,
know anything of its writer, Mrs. Sherwood. Yet her life, as told by
herself, is as amusing as a story, and as full of incidents as a life
could well be. When she was a very old woman she wrote her
autobiography, helped by her daughter; and from this book, which has
been long o