From Canal Boy to President
The present series of volumes has been undertaken with the view of supplying the want of a class of books for children, of a vigorous, manly tone, combined with a plain and concise mode of narration. The writings of Charles Dickens have been selected as the basis of the scheme, on account of the well-known excellence of his portrayal of children, and the interests connected with children--qualities which have given his volumes their strongest hold on the hearts of parents. These delineations having thus received the approval of readers of mature age, it seemed a worthy effort to make the young also participants in the enjoyment of these classic fictions, to introduce the children of real life to these beautiful children of the imagination. With this view, the career of Little Nell and her Grandfather, Oliver, Little Paul, Florence Dombey, Smike, and the Child-Wife, have been detached from the large mass of matter with which they were originally connected, and presented, in the author's own language, to a new class of readers, to whom the little volumes will we doubt not, be as attractive as the larger originals have so long proved to the general public. We have brought down these famous stories from the library to the nursery--the parlor table to the child's hands--having a precedent
All at once I held out the paper to the candle--I would burn it
without reading a word. Then a thought stayed me, "What can he have to
say that he writes so secretly?" Well, dear, I _did_ burn it,
reflecting that, though any other girl in the world would have
devoured the letter, it was not fitting that I--Armande-Louise-Marie
de Chaulieu--should read it.
The next day, at the Italian opera, he was at his post. But I feel
sure that, ex-prime minister of a constitutional government though he
is, he could not discover the slightest agitation of mind in any
movement of mine. I might have seen nothing and received nothing the
evening before. This was most satisfactory to me, but he looked very
sad. Poor man! in Spain it is so natural for love to come in at the
window!
During the interval, it seems, he came and walked in the passages.
This I learned from the chief secretary of the Spanish embassy, who
also told the story of a noble action of his.
As Duc de Soria he was to marry one of the richest heiresses in Spain,
the young princess Marie Heredia, whose wealth would have mitigated
the bitterness of exile. But it seems that Marie, disappointing the
wishes of the fathers, who had betrothed them in their earliest
childhood, loved the younger son of the house of Soria, to whom my
Felipe, gave her up. Allowing himself to be despoiled by the King of
The present series of volumes has been undertaken with the view of supplying the want of a class of books for children, of a vigorous, manly tone, combined with a plain and concise mode of narration. The writings of Charles Dickens have been selected as the basis of the scheme, on account of the well-known excellence of his portrayal of children, and the interests connected with children--qualities which have given his volumes their strongest hold on the hearts of parents. These delineations having thus received the approval of readers of mature age, it seemed a worthy effort to make the young also participants in the enjoyment of these classic fictions, to introduce the children of real life to these beautiful children of the imagination. With this view, the career of Little Nell and her Grandfather, Oliver, Little Paul, Florence Dombey, Smike, and the Child-Wife, have been detached from the large mass of matter with which they were originally connected, and presented, in the author's own language, to a new class of readers, to whom the little volumes will we doubt not, be as attractive as the larger originals have so long proved to the general public. We have brought down these famous stories from the library to the nursery--the parlor table to the child's hands--having a precedent