LITMIR.BIZ

      In memory of ten happy years,

      this little book is dedicated to the

      children of John, William, Anna, Martha, and George.

PREFACE

       Table of Contents

      Not for my dear usual public of little children have I gathered these stories from Scandinavian authors, but for boys and girls who have reached a stage which warrants a rather free range in Story Land. For here are to be encountered creatures and events, deeds and ideas, unsuited to youngest readers, but which have legitimate attraction for boys and girls from nine to fourteen years old—the age varying according to the child's maturity and previous reading.

      Five of these stories were written by the noted Finnish author, Zachris Topelius, who wrote them, and much else, for the children of Finland and Sweden more than fifty years ago. His loving sympathy for children, and his earnest desire to write only what was wholesome and good for them, shine through all his literary work for the young. His "Läsning för Barn" (Reading for Children) in several volumes, contains stories, true and imaginative, poems, songs, hymns, and many charming plays for children to act. Although a Finn, Topelius wrote in the Swedish language.

      By the kind permission of Miss Margaret Böcher I have made use of her excellent rendering of Sampo Lappelil.

      Of the other stories presented here, two (The Forest Witch and The Testing of the Two Knights) were translated from the Danish, and one (Anton's Errand, or The Boy Who Made Friends by the Way) from the Norwegian.

      The translations are not strictly literal, neither are they, I am sure, unjustifiably free. The liberty exercised consists chiefly of omission. For example, in Knut Spelevink, extra incidents were omitted which dragged the story to a tedious length or marred it by the inartistic, outworn device of explaining Knut's adventures as a dream; in The Princess Lindagull, some details of the wild-beast fight were left out; in A Legend of Mercy, a hampering husk was stripped off from the good seed of the quaint little story. Most of the minor changes were made for the sake of smoothness and clarity.

      In general, wherever I, as translator or editor, have varied from the original, I have done so to make the stories as directly appealing, as delightful, and as profitable as possible, for our boys and girls.

      Emilie Poulsson.

       Boston, Ma