PREFATORY NOTE.

tion of which the best types are to be

found in Grimm’s Collection of German
Household Tales, and of which the line was so well
continued by Hans Andersen. Many have tried to
follow in the same path ; but none, it seems to me,
have done it so well as Mrs. Aspinwall. Her stories
have that pure impossibility in which children de-
light, that fresh vigor which carries attention along,
and that suggestion which even children vaguely
feel of deeper meanings. ‘The Quickly-Growing
Squash,” for instance, is to the child who hears it,
as it doubtless was to the author, only a bit of
frolic extravaganza ; but if it had been written—as
it well might have been—by Tieck or Hoffmann
or Musaus, it would have had ere now a dozen

vu

c ‘HESE stories are bits of that pure imagina-