fidence that the editor offers _The True Story
Book_ to children. We have now given them three fairy books, and their
very kind and flattering letters to the editor prove, not only that they
like the three fairy books, but that they clamour for more. What
disappointment, then, to receive a volume full of adventures which
actually happened to real people! There is not a dragon in the
collection, nor even a giant; witches, here, play no part, and almost
all the characters are grown up. On the other hand, if we have no
fairies, we have princes in plenty, and a sweeter young prince than
Tearlach (as far as this part of his story goes) the editor flatters
himself that you shall nowhere find, not in Grimm, or Dasent, or
Perrault. Still, it cannot be denied that true stories are not so good
as fairy tales. They do not always end happily, and, what is worse, they
do remind a young student of lessons and schoolrooms. A child may fear
that he is being taught under a specious pretence of diversion, and that
learning is being thrust on him under the disguise of entertainment.
Prince Charlie and Cortes may be asked about in examinations, whereas no
examiner has hitherto set questions on 'Blue Beard,' or 'Heart of Ice,'
or 'The Red Etin of Ireland.' There is, to be honest, no way of getting
over this difficulty. But the editor vows that he does not mean to teach
anybody, and he has tried to mix the stories up so much that no clear
and consecutive view of history can possibly be obtained from them;
moreover, when history does come in, it is not the kind of history
favoured most by examiners. They seldom set questions on the conquest of
Mexico, for example.

That is a very long story, but, to the editor's taste, it is simply the
best true story in the world, the most unlikely, and the most romantic.
For who could have supposed that the new-found world of the West held
all that wealth of treasure, emeralds and gold, all those people, so
beautiful and brave, so courteous and cruel, with their terrible gods,
hideous human sacrifices, and almost Christian prayers? That a handful
of Spaniards, themselves mistaken for children of a white god, should
have crossed the sea, should have found a lovely lady, as in a fairy
tale, ready to lead them to victory, should have planted the cross on
the shambles of Huitzilopochtli, after that wild battle on the temple
crest, should have been driven in rout from, and then recaptured, the
Venice of the West