Augusta Joyce Crocheron

The Children's Book: a Collection of Short Stories and Poems; a Mormon Book for Mormon Children Augusta Joyce Crocheron

Publisher Marketing: The thought came into my mind, Write a book for the children; and while I listened, it became a desire and a pleasant one, for I would dearly love to become the household friend of many little children who are growing up within the homes of the Saints. If they are willing to listen, I will tell them a few true stories, not fairy ones, indeed, of which little ones are so fond, so fascinating, but, alas! so false. No, these must be true. Many pleasant hours have I spent in story-telling, and surely my pleasure was as great as theirs; stories to sleepy eyes, out in the summer moonlight on the veranda, with great patches of flowers faintly showing in the shadows of wide branches, and night-birds singing over us; story-telling on rainy afternoons, or by roaring hearth-light; at home and abroad-how many listeners there have been. But I must not tell you what I have read, as I did those little hearers, it must be some things that I have known. If I could only show to my little friends of the present time, the sweet faces remembered looking anxiously into mine, it would be the best part of the book; those-no story could equal. Would that I could make these, also, my friends, as the authors I so loved were mine. Pleasant smiles and kind words from good hearts are sometimes worth more than silver and gold. AUGUSTA JOYCE CROCHERON Bountiful, Davis County, Utah September 3, 1890