Boys and girls from George Eliot

Preface

Among the novels of the great English writer, George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), it is the exception to find one which does not contain a pretty picture of child life. And always the children are bright, active, normal children, who even when they have nothing to do with the development of the plot, yet are great additions to the novels from which they are taken, just because they are such true pictures of boys and girls as they exist in everyday life. It is for this reason that they have been thought worthy of being gathered together in a single volume. If the boys and girls who read about them are interested in Tom and Maggie, — • a true history of George Eliot's youthful experience with the brother only three years older than herself; in Eppie, the weaver's adopted daughter; and in the other children whose pranks and pastimes are here related, — and if they follow up these stories by turning to the books from which they have been taken, then will the volume have served its purpose well; for only as a means to an end, and that end the reading of George Eliot's novels by the young people of to-day, has it been compiled.

K. D. S.