The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gypsy Breynton, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

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Title: Gypsy Breynton

Author: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

Release Date: June 14, 2006 [EBook #18582]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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GYPSY BREYNTON

By
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS

New York
Dodd, Mead and Company

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by
GRAVES & YOUNG,
in the Clerk's Office for the District Court of Massachusetts

Copyright, 1894, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward.

PREFACE.

Having been asked to write a preface to the new edition of the Gypsy
books, I am not a little perplexed. I was hardly more than a girl myself,
when I recorded the history of this young person; and I find it hard, at
this distance, to photograph her as she looks, or ought to look to-day.
She does not sit still long enough to be "taken." I see a lively girl in
pretty short dresses and very long stockings,--quite a Tom-boy, if I
remember rightly. She paddles a raft, she climbs a tree, she skates and
tramps and coasts, she is usually very muddy, and a little torn. There is
apt to be a pin in her gathers; but there is sure to be a laugh in her
eyes. Wherever there is mischief, there is Gypsy. Yet, wherever there is
fun, and health, and hope, and happiness,--and I think, wherever there is
truthfulness and generosity,--there is Gypsy, too.

And now, the publishers tell me that Gypsy is thirty years old, and that
girls who were not so much as born when I knew the little lady, are her
readers and her friends to-day.

Thirty years old? Indeed, it is more than that! For is it not thirty years
since the publication of her memoirs? And was she, at that time, possibly
sixteen? Forty-six years? Incredible! How in the world did Gypsy "grow
up?" For that was before toboggans and telephones, before bicycles and
electric cars, before bangs and puffed sleeves, before girls studied
Greek, and golf-capes came in. Did she go to college? For the Annex, and
Smith, and Wellesley were not. Did she have a