The Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Cap Tales, by Samuel Rutherford Crockett

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Title: Red Cap Tales
Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North

Author: Samuel Rutherford Crockett

Release Date: September 17, 2007 [EBook #22656]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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RED CAP TALES

[Illustration: Red Cap among the Wizard's Treasures.]

RED CAP TALES

STOLEN FROM THE TREASURE CHEST OF THE WIZARD OF THE NORTH

WHICH THEFT IS HUMBLY ACKNOWLEDGED BY

S. R. CROCKETT

=New York= THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 1904

COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1904.

=Norwood Press=
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

THE WHY!

FOUR CHILDREN WOULD NOT READ SCOTT

SO I told them these stories--and others--to lure them to the printed
book, much as carrots are dangled before the nose of the reluctant
donkey. They are four average intelligent children enough, but they hold
severely modern views upon storybooks. _Waverley_, in especial, they
could not away with. They found themselves stuck upon the very
threshold.

Now, since the first telling of these Red Cap Tales, the Scott shelf in
the library has been taken by storm and escalade. It is permanently
gap-toothed all along the line. Also there are nightly skirmishes, even
to the laying on of hands, as to who shall sleep with _Waverley_ under
his pillow.

It struck me that there must be many oldsters in the world who, for the
sake of their own youth, would like the various Sweethearts who now
inhabit their nurseries, to read Sir Walter with the same breathless
eagerness as they used to do--how many years agone? It is chiefly for
their sakes that I have added several interludes, telling how
Sweetheart, Hugh John, Sir Toady Lion, and Maid Margaret received my
petty larcenies from the full chest of the Wizard.

At any rate, Red Cap succeeded in one case--why should he not in
another? I claim n