The round ball is the earth, and the sisters are the tribes that
dwell thereon. The little book was conceived in a happy hour; its
pictures are so real and so graphic, so warm and so human, that
the most literal and the most imaginative of children must find
in them, not only something to charm, but also to mould pleasant
associations for maturer years.
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.
MYTHOLOGY, FOLK-LORE, LEGENDS, AND FAIRY TALES
And as with the toys, so with the toy-books. They exist
everywhere: there is no calculating the distance through which
the stories come to us, the number of languages through which
they have been filtered, or the centuries during which they have
been told. Many of them have been narrated, almost in their
present shape, for thousands of years since, to little
copper-coloured Sanscrit children, listening to their mother
under the palm-trees by the banks of the yellow Jumna--their (p. 42)
Brahmin mother, who softly narrated them through the ring in
her nose. The very same tale has been heard by the Northmen
Vikings as they lay on their shields on deck; and by Arabs
couched under the stars on the Syrian plains when the flocks were
gathered in and the mares were picketed by the tents.
Pages:
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38