After many years this little book is once more to see the light.

The children for whom it was written are long since grown up.

But perhaps the pleasure they once took in it may still be felt by some of the Millys and Ollys of to-day.

Up in the dear mountain country which it describes, the becks are still sparkling; "Brownholme" still spreads its green steeps and ferny hollows under rain and sun; the tiny trout still leap in its tiny streams; and Fairfield, in its noble curve, still girdles the deep valley where these children played: the valley of Wordsworth and Arnold--the valley where Arnold's poet-son rambled as a boy--where, for me, the shy and passionate ghost of Charlotte Bronte still haunts the open door-way of Fox How--where poetry and generous life and ranging thought still dwell, and bring their benediction to the passers-by.

"Aunt Emma" in her beautiful home, unchanged but for its vacant chairs, is now as she ever was, the friend of old and young; and the children of to-day still press to her side as their elders did before them.