...More pedantic critics than we may smile at Irving's gifts as a scholarly historian, but we who know that the highest and sweetest wisdom in every race finds expression in its legends will see to it that every generation of children in America shall be familiar with traditions as heroic and brilliant as any ever created.

The author of this arrangement of Irving's Alhambra stories loved these stories when she was a child, but was troubled by the necessity of hunting them out from their context. Therefore with rare and happy tact she has selected and simplified some of the narratives, enriching them with Mr. Charles E. Brock's fine drawings, for other children whose eyes turn eagerly to look through

     "Magic casements opening on the foam
     Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn."
                                        Frances Squire

From the Introduction