In calling the tales in this volume "Strange Stories" I have sought simply to indicate that, in the main, they are unfamiliar to youthful readers, and that most of them relate deeds and occurrences some what out of the common. In choosing the themes I have tried to avoid the tales that have been often used, and to tell only those of which young readers generally have not before heard.

Of course, a book of this kind can make no pretension to originality of matter, as the facts used in it are to be found in historical works of recognized authority, though many of them have been drawn from books that are not easily accessible to the majority of readers. If there is any originality in my little volume it is in the manner in which the tales are told. I have endeavored to tell them as simply as possible, and at the same time with as much dramatic force and fervor as I could command, while adhering rigidly to the facts of history.

It would be impossible for me to say to what sources I am indebted for materials. The incidents related have been familiar to me for years, as they are to all persons whose reading of history has been at all extensive, and I cannot say with any certainty how much of each I learned from one and how much from another historical writer. Nor is it in any way necessary that I should do so, as the recorded facts of history are common property. But a special acknowledgment is due to Mr. James Parton in the case of the tale of the Negro Fort, and also for certain details in those relating to the New Orleans campaign of 1814-15. In that field Mr. Parton is an original investigator, to whose labors every writer on the subject must be indebted. I wish also to acknowledge my obligation to Mr. A.B. Meek, the author of a little work entitled "Romantic Passages in Southwestern History," for the main facts in the stories of the Charge of the Hounds and the Battle of the Canoes on the Alabama River; but, with respect to those matters, I have had the advantage of private sources of information also.

Most of the stories in the volume were originally written for Harper's Young People; one was first published in Good Cheer, and a few in other periodicals. I owe thanks to the editors and publishers concerned for permission to reprint them in this form.