Page:Old fashioned tales.djvu/20

 Introduction Daniel was once a favourite, and his narrative is included here partly for that reason, and partly because a robbers' cave is an agreeable incident in a book too much concerned with good and naughty children in ordinary English homes. To another of these children — this time a girl — we come in ' The Inquisitive Girl,' on page 230, a story of which I give only half. The remainder, which is not interesting, may be found by the curious in The Amusements of Westenhealh, sl book which I have not succeeded in seeing, or in Mary Howitt's Treasury of Tales. I do not know the author of ■ The Inquisi- tive Girl.' The device of the torn letter, which is very neat, I have seen in ordinary novels more than once, especially in treasure-hunting tales, but not before or since in a morality for the nursery. ■ Helen Holmes ; or, The Villager Metamorphosed,' on page 242, is from The Parents' Offering, 1813, by Mrs. Caroline Barnard. It is not, I think, a very good story, but there are points of interest. The wholly inexcusable conduct of Miss Meadows towards the end is a sad blot, which, had it come earlier, would have disqualified the tale altogether ; but the spirited description of the birthday-party which precedes it led me to retain it. I have already commented on the un- desirableness of Caroline's mother, yet she is done with some realistic skill. Taken as a whole, however, the tale is without the illusion of reality, and perhaps when all is said won its place more by its absurdity than any other merit. ' Helen Holmes ' paves the way, however, for the good sense and freshness of ' Bob and Dog Quiz,' on page 285, the longest story in the book, and I think the one which probably is least known. I found it in a little volume called Simple Tales for the Young, 1847, but the author's name I have not dis- covered, nor anything about her, except that she wrote also The Gipsies and Fairy Birds from Fairy Islet ; or, The Children of the Forest, a book which sounds well, but which I have not seen. ' Bob and Dog Quiz ' seems to me the work of a very charming mind, and a very unusual one, too, in children's xiv