Seven Little Australians





Publishers have asked me to add a preface to this sixteenth edition of my first book. What is it I should say?

Suppose you knew a child—not a well-behaved one by any means; just a rough little everyday boy with tousled hair and ungramattical tongue. And suppose this lad in some way introduced you to a wide circle of valued and delightful friends and set your feet in the path of a career that brought you, not only good fortune but many gratifications of an innocent vanity. The probabilities are that you would feel very kindly to such a youngster and would not investigate too closely his actual merits.

That, at any rate, is my attitude to "Seven Little Australians," and in reading it over I have preferred to allow some imperfections to remain, rather than to alter them, just as I should refrain from too sedulous an endeavour to correct the faults of the well-meaning tousled little person whose good offices I have imagined above.

2em

February, 1912