SUPPLEMENTARY STORIES.
It is twenty years since the first part of this little volume was published. The dear children for whom those simple stories of my childhood were told are men and women now, and wonderful changes have taken place in all our lives and in all the world. But in growing old I have not lost any thing of my old love of pets; and I hope that my little readers of this time will understand and share that feeling. I hope that you, dear boys and girls, look on all innocent dumb creatures about you as friends, and have not only a kindly interest in them, but respect them for all that is lovely and wonderful in their brief existences, and as objects of the unceasing care and tenderness of our Father in heaven. Every smallest creature that lives represents a thought of God,—was born out of his great, deep, infinite life.
I hope you especially like to hear about dogs and cats, birds and chickens, for it is of them that I have a few new stories to relate, as true as they are amusing or marvellous.