The author’s great doubt is, whether he has succeeded in writing a book which will be readable by the class for whom he intends it.  To make a lively and entertaining narrative for children, with such unmalleable material as is presented by the sombre, stern, and rigid characteristics of the Puritans and their descendants, is quite as difficult an attempt, as to manufacture delicate playthings out of the granite rocks on which New England is founded.

The whole history of grandfather’s chair

Completein three parts.

Part I

Chapter I

Grandfather had been sitting in his old arm-chair, all that pleasant afternoon, while the children were pursuing their various sports, far off or near at hand.  Sometimes you would have said, “Grandfather is asleep;” but still, even when his eyes were closed, his thoughts were with the young people, playing among the flowers and shrubbery of the garden.

He heard the voice of Laurence, who had taken possession of a heap of decayed branches which the gardener had lopped from the fruit trees, and was building a little hut for his cousin Clara and himself.  He heard Clara’s gladsome voice, too, as she weeded and watered the flower-bed which had been given her for her own.  He could have counted every footstep that Charley took, as he trundled his wheelbarrow along the gravel walk.  And though Grandfather was old and gray-haired, yet his heart leaped with joy whenever little Alice came fluttering, like a butterfly, into the room.  She had made each of the children her playmate in turn, and now made Grandfather her playmate too, and thought him the merriest of them all.

At last the children grew weary of their sports; because a summer afternoon is like a long lifetime to the young.  So they came into the room together, and clustered round Grandfather’s great chair.  Little Alice, who was hardly five years old, took the privilege of the youngest, and climbed his knee.  It was a pleasant thing to behold that fair and golden-haired child in the lap of the old man, and to think that, different as they were, the hearts of both could be gladdened with the same joys.

“Grandfather,” said little Alice, laying her head back upon his arm, “I am very tired now.  You must tell me a story to make me go to sleep.”

“That is not what story-tellers like,” answered Grandfather, smiling.  “They are better satisfied when they can keep their auditors awake.”

“But here are Laurence, and Charley, and I,” cried cousin Clara, who was twice as old as little Alice.  “We will all three keep wide awake.  And pray, Grandfather, tell us a story about this strange-looking old chair.”