BY LOUISA PARSONS HOPKINS.

Perhaps the readers and lovers of this little book will be glad of a few pages, by way of introduction, which shall show them somewhat of Miss Andrews herself, and of her way of writing and teaching, as an old friend and schoolmate may try to tell it; and, to begin with, a glimpse of the happy day when she called a few of her friends together to listen to the stories contained in this volume, before they were offered to a publisher.

Picture to yourselves a group of young ladies in one of the loveliest of old-fashioned parlors, looking out on a broad, elm-shaded street in the old town of Newburyport.  The room is long and large, with wide mahogany seats in the four deep windows, ancient mahogany chairs, and great bookcases across one side of the room, with dark pier-tables and centre-table, and large mirror,—­all of ancestral New England solidity and rich simplicity; some saintly portraits on the wall, a modern easel in the corner accounting for fine bits of coloring on canvas, crayon drawings about the room, and a gorgeous firescreen of autumn tints; nasturtium vines in bloom glorifying the south window, and German ivy decorating the north corner; choice books here and there, not to look at only, but to be assimilated; with an air of quiet refinement and the very essence of cultured homeness pervading all;—­this is the meagre outline of a room, which, having once sat within, you would wish never to see changed, in which many pure and noble men and women have loved to commune with the lives which have been so blent with all its suggestions that it almost seems a part of their organic being.

But it was twenty-five years ago [This memorial was written in 1887.] that this circle of congenial and expectant young people were drawn together in the room to listen to the first reading of the MSS. of “The Seven Little Sisters.”  I will not name them all; but one whose youthful fame and genius were the pride of all, Harriet Prescott (now Mrs. Spofford), was Jane’s friend and neighbor for years, and heard most of her books in MSS.  They were all friends, and in a very sympathetic and eager attitude of mind, you may well believe; for in the midst, by the centre-table, sits Jane, who has called them together; and knowing that she has really written a book, each one feels almost that she herself has written it in some unconscious way, because each feels identified with Jane’s work, and is ready to be as proud of it, and as sure of it, as all the world is now of the success of Miss Jane Andrews’s writings for the boys and girls in these little stories of geography and history which bear her name.