Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Jen Haines and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's Note: Inconsistencies in spelling e.g. color/colour, neighbor/neighbour have been left as in the original. [Illustration: The Land of Memory] THE . BLUE . BIRD [Illustration: Bluebird] FOR CHILDREN [Illustration: Bluebird] THE . WONDERFUL . ADVENTURES OF . TYLTYL . AND . MYTYL . IN SEARCH . OF . HAPPINESS BY GEORGETTE LEBLANC [MADAME MAURICE MAETERLINCK] EDITED AND ARRANGED FOR SCHOOLS BY FREDERICK ORVILLE PERKINS TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS [Illustration: Publisher Logo] SILVER . BURDETT & COMPANY BOSTON . NEW YORK . CHICAGO . ATLANTA DALLAS . SAN FRANCISCO COPYRIGHT, 1913 BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1913 BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1914 BY SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY This School Edition of The Blue Bird for Children is affectionately dedicated to the School Children of America Georgette Leblanc (Madame Maurice Maeterlinck) _To The Teacher_ "The Blue Bird, inhabitant of the _Pays Bleu_, the fabulous blue country of our dreams is an ancient symbol in the folk lore of Lorraine and stands for happiness." One of the strongest pieces of imaginative writing for children that the past decade has produced and one of the most delicate and beautiful of all times, is "The Blue Bird," by Maurice Maeterlinck, written as a play, and very successfully produced on the stage. Georgette Leblanc (Madame Maurice Maeterlinck), has rendered this play in story form for children, under the title "The Children's Blue Bird," and in this form it has now been carefully edited and arranged for schools. Maurice Maeterlinck was born in Ghent, Belgium, August 29, 1862. Although trained for the practice of the law and moderately successful in it, he very early became dissatisfied with the prospect of a career at the bar. In 1887, the young man moved to Paris and turned his attention to writing. Shortly after, at the death of his father, Maeterlinck returned to Belgium where he has since resided most of the time. His career as an author practically began in 1889, when he published two plays. At this time he was quite unknown, except to a small circle, but soon, because of his remarkable originality, we find him being called "The Belgian Shakespeare," and his reputation firmly established.