GIRLS IN BOOKLAND HILDEGARDE HAWTHORNE [Illustration: A DEMURE LITTLE CROWD THEY WERE, STANDING PRIMLY, HAND IN HAND ] GIRLS IN BOOKLAND BY HILDEGARDE HAWTHORNE ILLUSTRATED BY JOHN WOLCOTT ADAMS [Illustration] NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1915, 1916, BY THE BUTTERICK PUBLISHING COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA To MY FOUR LITTLE NIECES UNA, ROSAMOND, SYLVIA AND JOAN ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A WORD BEFORE THE STORY Inside this world in which we live there is another world, a very wonderful world, that is ours for the taking. Many things in the world we live in every day are denied to us. Maybe for the reason that we cannot possibly learn how to make use of them all, even though we think we want them very much. Lots of us can never hunt lions in Africa or sail the high seas, or find gold, or herd cows on the wild prairies, or know a pirate, or run an engine, or become kings or queens or presidents or the wives of presidents, or anything great and famous like that. We have to let others do those things, and they again have to let us do the things we do. We can each only be our kind of boy or girl, man or woman. But in the world inside this we can be and do anything, not only now and here, but back in dim ages when knights were bold and castles held prisoned princesses. We can know intimately all sorts of people, savages and noblemen, cowboys and bank-clerks, fairies and fisher folk, poor little children and rich little children, great captains and wicked robbers, lovely ladies and strange old women, poets and farmers. We can go on high adventure and find dreams come true. We can be hundreds of different persons, men and women and boys and girls, beasts and fishes, clouds and mountains. Once inside that world, anything is liable to happen to us. This inside world is the world of books. There, on your bookshelf, inside the quiet-looking blue and brown and red and green volumes, all sorts of exciting things are going on, all sorts of people are busy over all sorts of affairs, talking and laughing, crying and playing, having marvellous escapes, doing wonderful deeds. If we could just step inside those books and join in the life going on so busily—lose ourselves in one book after another! Wouldn’t it be thrilling? Rose and Ruth were lucky in having the fairy to help them, to be sure. But even without a fairy much may be done.