learned Spanish, to many a group of brown-cheeked
little people on the hillsides of Sonora.

And now, long, long afterward, there stands on a shelf above my desk
the very selfsame worn green volume, read and re-read a hundred times,
but so tenderly and respectfully that it has kept all its pages and
both its covers; and on this desk itself are the proofs of a new
edition with clear, beautiful print and gay pictures by Edward
McCandlish!

To be asked to write an introduction to this particular book seems
insufferable patronage; yet one would do it for love of Laboulaye, or
for the sake of one's own "little past," or to draw one more young
reader into the charmed circle that will welcome these pages.

The two children who adored Laboulaye's "Tales" possessed many another
fairy book, so why did this especial volume hold a niche apart in the
gallery of their hearts?

Partly, perhaps, because of the Gallic wit and vivacity with which the
tales are told, for children are never too young to appreciate the
charms of style.

You remember, possibly, the French chef who, being imprisoned with no
materials save the tools of his trade, and commanded on pain of death
to produce an omelette, proudly emerged at last, bearing a savory dish
made out of the sole of his shoe?

Of even such stuff Laboulaye could have concocted a delectable tale;
but with Brittany, Bohemia, Italy, Dalmatia, Hungary, and Spain for
his storehouses, one has only to taste to know how finely flavored are
the dishes he sets forth.

In his preface to the first American edition Laboulaye writes a letter
to Mlle. Gabrielle Laboulaye, aged two! In it he says: "When you throw
away this book with your doll, do not be too severe with your old
grandfather for wasting his time on such trifles as fairy stories.
Experience will teach you that the truest and sweetest things in life
are not those which we see, but of which we dream." Happy the children
who have this philosophy set before them early in life.

Like the fairy tales Robert Louis Stevenson remembered, these of
Laboulaye's have "the golden smell of broom and the shade of pine,"
and they will come back to the child whenever the Wind of Memory
blows.

In common with the stories of Charles Perrault, literary parent of the
fairy tale, Laboulaye's charming narratives have a certain unique
quality due to the fact that they were intended and collected for the
author's own children, were told to them round the