in their time—periodicals that have now gone the way of almost all young people's magazines, to the land of forgetfulness. Although I recall with pleasure the fact that these little tales enjoyed a considerable popularity when they first appeared, I might just as well as not have called them "The Unlucky Stories." In two or three forms some of the stories that form this collection have appeared in book covers in years past, but always to meet with disaster that was no fault of theirs. Two little books that contained a part of the stories herein reprinted were burned up—plates, cuts and all—in the Chicago fire of 1871. Another book, with some of these stories in it, was issued by a publisher in Boston, who almost immediately failed, leaving the plates in pawn. These fell into the hands of a man who issued a surreptitious edition, and then into the possession of another, to whom at length I was forced to pay a round sum for the plates, in order to extricate my unfortunate tales from the hands of freebooters. This is therefore the first fair and square issue in book form that these stories have had. For this they have been revised by the author, and printed from plates wholly new by the liberality of the present publisher. 

Queer Stories

 E. E. 

  Owls' Nest, Lake George, 1884. 

 Owls' Nest

 CONTENTS. 

 QUEER STORIES. 

   Bobby and the Key-hole, a Hoosier Fairy Tale,3 

 Bobby and the Key-hole, a Hoosier Fairy Tale

3

   Mr. Blake's Walking-stick,23 

 Mr. Blake's Walking-stick

23

 Prev. P 2/110 next