PREFATORY NOTE. T' HIS Gift-Book has been prepared partly with the view of bringing young people into contact, in a way that will please and attract them, with the works of some of those great or popular writers whom, when they grow up into men and women, it will be their pride to study and admire. The selection, however, has not been strictly limited by this purpose; it will be found that the book is not without material fitted to interest youthful minds even in an early stage of intelligence. The Editor would not claim for the volume the merit of filling up the gap in our Gift-Book Literature, which might be supplied by carefully and pleasingly enlisting the interest of the young in those great stores of English Literature in which, when they are older, they will find at once the enjoyment and |