Many of the selections in this volume are waifs and strays, found in obscure periodicals and newspapers, or in long-forgotten books on the dusty shelves of libraries. Some of them have been gathered from copyrighted works, and for the use of these the compiler owes and renders his best thanks.

Special acknowledgments are due to the following publishers and copyright holders:

The Houghton, Mifflin Company, for selections from the poems of John Greenleaf Whittier, Edith M. Thomas, Celia Thaxter, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Richard Watson Gilder, John Hay, Lucy Larcom, George E. Woodbury, Alice and Phoebe Cary, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney, and Edmund Clarence Stedman; Messrs. Little, Brown and Company, for lines by Louise Chandler Moulton and Helen Hunt Jackson; Messrs. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, for selections from the works of Dora Read Goodale and Myrtle Reed; Messrs. Charles Scribner’s Sons, for extracts from the writings of Henry Van Dyke, Mary Mapes Dodge, Oliver Herford, and Frances Hodgson Burnett; and Messrs. Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, for permission to quote from Clinton Scollard’s work.