apparent.

The American Indian stories of Manabozho the Mischief-Maker and his
adventures with the Wolf and the Woodpeckers and the Ducks were
collected in very much the same way by Henry R. Schoolcraft (1793-
1864), the explorer and traveler, who lived among the Indian tribes for
thirty years.

Mrs. Steel has told us how she collected her Hindu stories, often
listening over and over to poor story-tellers who would spoil a story
in trying to tell it, until one day her patience would be rewarded by
hearing it from the lips of the best storyteller in the village, who
was generally a boy.

As all nations have their fairy tales, you will find in this collection
examples of English, Irish, French, German, Scandinavian, Icelandic,
Russian, Polish, Serbian, Spanish, Arabian, Hindu, Chinese, and
Japanese fairy tales, as well as those recited around the lodge fires
at night by American Indians for the entertainment of the red children
of the West.

I hope the work may prove for many a boy and girl (of any age up to a
hundred) the Golden Bridge over which they can plunge into that
marvelous world of fairies, elves, goblins, kobolds, trolls, afreets,
jinns, ogres, and giants that fascinates us all, lost to this world
till some one wakes us up to say "Bedtime!"

Such excursions fill the mind with beautiful fancies and help to
develop that most precious of our faculties, the imagination.