Page:Old fashioned tales.djvu/18

 Introduction is insisted upon. But the worst instances of central rectitude and outside deplorableness occur, perhaps, in The F. ir child Family, where the young Fairchilds are called upon by their father (to the author's perfect satisfaction) to notice the defects or ■ besetting sins ' of the Crosbies. 1847), an d it comes from Mrs. Leicester's School, 1809. By the quaint scheme of that book, in order that the girls at the school might quickly become acquainted with each other at the begin- ning of the term, they sit round the fire, and, encouraged by their governess, tell in turn the story of their lives. ' The Changeling ' is the story of Ann Withers. ' The Sea Voyage,' on page 188, which was contributed to the same volume by Charles Lamb (1775-1834) is the story of little Arabella Hardy. 1 The Changeling,' which I have cut short some pages before the original ending, is not, I think, by any means the best story in Mrs. Leicester's School -indeed, it is least character- istic and charming ; but it is the most interesting, judged purely as a record of events, and therefore I have included it here. But for Mary Lamb's true gift of simple and sympa- thetic narrative one must go rather to ' The Sailor Uncle,' to ' The Father's Wedding Day,' or to ' The Young Mahometan.' ' The Sea Voyage ' is an example of Charles Lamb's treat- ment of a totally unfamiliar theme. Whether he made it up, or whether the story embodies the experiences of some child of whom he had heard, we probably shall never know. My own impression is that he did not make it up. He rarely invented material ; he took that where he found it, and in- vented the embroidery. The story to which the title ' Embellishment ' has been given is a chapter from Madeline, one of the Franconia stories of Jacob Abbott (1803-1879). It here follows the text of The Beechnut Book, which I compiled for Messrs. Methuen's Little Blue Books a year or so ago. Jacob Abbott, as is said in the preface to that book, wrote altogether more than two hundred books. Many of these were books of information — histories and so forth — and many were stories, nearly all of which were
 * The Changeling,' on page 169, is by Mary Lamb (1763-