Produced by Curtis Weyant, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net SWEETHEARTS AT HOME BY S. R. CROCKETT AUTHOR OF "SWEETHEART TRAVELLERS," ETC. ASSISTED BY SWEETHEART HERSELF, AND WITH ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS BY HUGH JOHN, SIR TOADY LION, MAID MARGARET, AND MISS ELIZABETH FORTINBRAS NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS [Illustration: "WHEN I TURNED ABOUT--WHY, IT NEARLY TOOK MY BREATH AWAY"] List of Illustrations "WHEN I TURNED ABOUT--WHY, IT NEARLY TOOK MY BREATH AWAY" "DOING KOW-TOW TO THIS FALSE GOD" "HELP HER! ME, BUTCHER DONNAN!" "I USED TO SWOP CURRANTS AND SUGAR FOR NUTS AND LOVELY SPICY FRUITS" THE EDITOR'S CHAPTERS HE TELLS HOW IT ALL CAME ABOUT I _A sleepy Sunday morning--and no need for any one to go to church._ It was at Neuchatel, under the trees by the lake, that I first became conscious of what wonderful assistance Sweetheart might be to me in my literary work. She corrected me as to the date upon which we had made our pilgrimage to Chaumont, as to the color of the hair of the pretty daughter of the innkeeper whom we had seen there--in her way quite a Swiss Elizabeth Fortinbras. In a word, I became aware that she had kept a diary. Sweetheart, like her nearest literary relative, began with "poetry." That was what we called it then. We have both revised our judgments since. Only Sweetheart has been more wise than I should have been at her age. She has resisted temptation, and rigorously ruled out all verse from the Diary as at present published! This is wonderful. I published mine. Since then, she and I have been preparing the present volume, just as eagerly as if we had "yielded to the solicitations of numerous friends," as the privately-printed books say. No, it was quite the contrary with us. Nobody, except one nice publisher, knows anything about it. He asked us to let him print it, and even he has not seen the very least little scrap. All he knows is that Sweetheart has a good many thousand friends scattered up and down two hemispheres, and he believes (as we also are vain enough to believe) that they will not let _Sweetheart's Diary_ go a-begging to be bought. * * * * * There is something curiously dreamy about the Lake of Neuchatel. I knew it and the school down by the pier long ago, when the little town still preserved distinct traces of the hundred and fifty years of Prussian drill-sergeants. Here and there the arms of Brandenburg were to be seen curiously mixed, and almost entwined, with the strong red cross of the Swiss Confederation.