Nature stories, legends, and poems appeal to the young reader’s interest in various ways. Some of them suggest or reveal certain facts which stimulate a spirit of investigation and attract the child’s attention to the beauty and mystery of the world. Others serve an excellent purpose by quickening his sense of humour.

Seedtime and harvest have always been seasons of absorbing interest and have furnished the story-teller with rich themes. The selections in “The Emerald Story Book” emphasize the hope and premise of the spring; the stories, legends, and poems in this volume, “The Topaz Story Book,” express the joy and blessing which attend the harvest-time when the fields are rich in golden grain and the orchard boughs bend low with mellow fruit. “The year’s work is done. She walks in gorgeous apparel, looking upon her long labour and her serene eye saith, ‘It is good.’”

The editors’ thanks are due to the following authors and publishers for the use of valuable material in this book:

To Dr. Carl S. Patton of the First Congregational Church, Columbus, Ohio, for permission to include his story, “The Pretending Woodchuck”; to Frances Jenkins Olcott for “The Green Corn Dance,” retold from “The Journal of American Folk-Lore,” published by Houghton, Mifflin Company; to Ernest Thompson Seton and the Century Company for “How the Chestnut Burrs Became”; to Dr. J. Dynelly Prince for permission to retell the legend of “Nipon” from “Kuloskap the Master”; to Thomas Nelson and Sons for “Weeds,” by Carl Ewald; to William Herbert Carruth for the selection from “Each In His Own Tongue”; to Josephine K. Dodge for two poems by Mary Mapes Dodge; to A. Flanagan Company for “Golden-rod and Purple Aster,” from “Nature Myths and Stories,” by Flora J. Cooke; to J. B. Lippincott Company for “The Willow and the Bamboo,” from “Myths and Legends of the Flowers and Trees,” by Chas. M. Skinner; to Bobbs, Merrill Company for the selection by James Whitcomb Riley; to Lothrop, Lee, and Shepard Company for “The Pumpkin Giant,” from “The Pot of Gold,” by Mary Wilkins Freeman; to Raymond Macdonald Alden for “Lost: The Summer”; to the Youth’s Companion for “A Turkey for the Stuffing,” by Katherine Grace Hulbert, and “The News,” by Persis Gardiner; to John S. P. Alcott for “Queen Aster,” by Louisa M. Alcott; to G. P. Putnam’s Sons for two poems from “Red Apples and Silver Bells,” by Hamish Henry; to Francis Curtis and St. Nicholas for “The Debut of Daniel Webster,” by Isabel Gordon Curtis; to Emma F. Bush and Mothers’ Magazine for “The Little Pumpkin”; to Phila Butler Bowman and Mothers’ Magazine for “The Queer Little Baker Man”; to the Independent for “The Crown of the Year,” by Celia Thaxter; to Ginn and Company for “Winter’s Herald,” from Andrew’s “The Story of My Four Friends”; to Frederick A. Stokes Company for “Lady White and Lady Yellow,” from “Myths and Legends of Japan”; to the State Museum, Albany, New York, for permission to reprint the legend “O-na-tah, Spirit of the Corn,” published in the Museum Bulletin; to Houghton, Mifflin Company for “The Sickle Moon,” by Abbie Farwell Brown; “Autumn Among the Birds” and “Autumn Fashions” by Edith M. Thomas, “The Nutcrackers of Nutcracker Lodge” by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and “The Three Golden Apples” by Nathaniel Hawthorne; and to Duffield and Company for “The Story of the Opal” by Ann de Morgan.