[Illustration: THEIR FIRST KISS] Land _of_ Play Verses—Rhymes—Stories _Selected by_ Sara Tawney Lefferts _Illustrated by_ M. L. Kirk & Florence England Nosworthy [Illustration] New York Cupples & Leon Company Copyright, 1911, by CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY Printed in U.S.A. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Acknowledgment is due the following publishers and authors, for their courteous permission to use material on which they hold copyright: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., for permission to use “Hiawatha’s Childhood,” “The Heights by Great Men Reached,” by Henry W. Longfellow; “Barefoot Boy,” by John G. Whittier; “Chippy Chirio,” by John Burroughs; “What the Winds Bring,” by Edmund Clarence Stedman; “Fable,” “Duty,” by Emerson; “The Brown Thrush,” by Lucy Larcom; “April,” by Alice Cary. The Century Co., for permission to use “The Little Elf,” by John Kendrick Bangs. Small, Maynard & Co., for permission to use “The Tax Gatherer,” by John B. Tabb. Harper & Brothers, for permission to use “A Child’s Laughter,” from The Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne. Little, Brown & Co., for permission to use “The Swallow,” “There’s Nothing Like the Rose,” by Christina G. Rossetti; “Boys and Girls,” by Louisa M. Alcott. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., for permission to use “Follow Me,” by Eliza Lee Follen. New England Publishing Co., for permission to use “Our Mother,” from The American Primary Teacher. The Reilly & Britton Co., for permission to use “The Christmas Stocking,” by L. Frank Baum (copy. 1905). Sarah J. Day, for permission to use “Buttercups,” from “Mayflowers to Mistletoe” (G. P. Putnam’s Sons). Kate Upson Clark, for permission to use “Charlie’s Story,” “Marjorie’s Bath,” “Good Listening.” Good Housekeeping Magazine, for permission to use “A Dutch Lullaby,” “A Dutch Winter,” by Ella Broes van Heekeren. Newson & Co., for permission to reprint “A Story of Washington.” Charles Scribner’s Sons, for permission to use “Extremes,” by James Whitcomb Riley, from “The Book of Joyous Children”; “My Ship and I,” “The Little Land,” from “A Child’s Garden of Verses,” by Robert Louis Stevenson, and “The Duel,” by Eugene Field. I have just to shut my eyes To go sailing through the skies— To go sailing far away To the pleasant Land of Play. —_Robert Louis Stevenson._