Famous Stories Every Child Should Know

Famous Stories Every Child
Should Know

Project Gutenberg's Famous Stories Every Child Should Know, by
Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Famous Stories Every Child Should Know
Author: Various
Editor: Hamilton Wright Mabie
Release Date: July 8, 2005 [EBook #16247]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAMOUS
STORIES EVERY CHILD ***

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Diane Monico and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.

[Illustration: Old Man of the Mountain]

[Illustration: (Title Page)]

FAMOUS STORIES
Every Child Should Know
EDITED BY
Hamilton Wright Mabie
THE WHAT-EVERY-CHILD-SHOULD-KNOW-LIBRARY
Published by DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & CO., INC., for THE
PARENTS' INSTITUTE, INC.
_Publishers of "The Parents' Magazine"_
9 EAST 40th STREET, NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE
PRESS. GARDEN CITY. N.Y.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The stories of "The Great Stone Face" and "The Snow Image" by
Nathaniel Hawthorne, are used in this volume by permission of Messrs.
Houghton, Mifflin & Company. Messrs. Little, Brown & Company
have granted permission for the republication of "The Man Without a
Country" by Edward Everett Hale.

INTRODUCTION

The group of stories brought together in this volume differ from
legends because they have, with one exception, no core of fact at the
centre, from myths because they make no attempt to personify or
explain the forces or processes of nature, from fairy stories because
they do not often bring on to the stage actors of a different nature from
ours. They give full play to the fancy as in "A Child's Dream of a Star,"
"The King of the Golden River," "Undine," and "The Snow Image"; but
they are not poetic records of the facts of life, attempts to shape those
facts "to meet the needs of the imagination, the cravings of the heart."
In the Introduction to the book of Fairy Tales in this series, those
familiar and much loved stories which have been repeated to children
for unnumbered generations and will be repeated to the end of time, are
described as "records of the free and joyful play of the imagination,
opening doors through hard conditions to the spirit, which craves
power, freedom, happiness; righting wrongs, and redressing injuries;
defeating base designs; rewarding patience and virtue; crowning true
love with happiness; placing the powers of darkness under the control
of man and making their ministers his servants." The stories which
make up this volume are closer to experience and come, for the most
part, nearer to the every-day happenings of life.
A generation ago, when the noble activities of science and its inspiring
discoveries were taking possession of the minds of men and revealing
possibilities of power of which they had not dreamed, the prediction
was freely made that poetry and fiction had had their day, and that
henceforth men would be educated upon facts and get their inspirations
from what are called real things. So engrossing and so marvellous were
the results of investigation, the achievements of experiment, that it
seemed to many as if the older literature of imagination and fancy had
served its purpose as completely as alchemy, astrology, or chain
armour.
The prophecies of those fruitful years of research did not tell half the
story of the wonderful things that were to be; the uses of electricity
which are within easy reach for the most homely and practical purposes
are as mysterious and magical as the dreams of the magicians. We are
served by invisible ministers who are more powerful than the genii and

more nimble than Puck. There has been a girdle around the world for
many years; but there is good reason to believe that the time will come
when news will go round the globe on waves of air. If we were not
accustomed to ordering breakfast miles away from the grocer and the
poulterer, we should be overcome with amazement every time we took
up the telephone transmitter. Absolutely pure tones are now being
made by the use of dynamos and will soon be sent into homes lying
miles distant from the power house, so to speak, so that very sweet
music is being played by arc lights.
The anticipations of scientific men, so far as the uses of force are
concerned, have been surpassed by the wonderful discoveries and
applications of the past few years; but poetry and romance are not dead;
on the contrary, they are more alive in the sense of awakening a wider
interest than ever before in the history of writing. During