“When I say ‘the subject’ I do not mean merely the international marriage question, but the whole international outlook upon a situation between two great countries such as the history of the world--as far as I know it--has not previously recorded. The wonderfulness of it lies in the fact that two nations which were one, having parted with violence and bitterness, are with a strange sureness being drawn nearer, nearer to each other. That they are of the same blood--the mere fact that they speak the same tongue--makes the thing inevitable in the end. “I do not mean _The Shuttle_ to be merely a story of international marriage, but to suggest a thousand other things. The international marriage must, however, result in being a strong factor, and in the hands of a writer of fiction it must play a prominent part--a leading part, so to speak--because it is the love story, and without it we are lost. For the matter of that, without it ‘the shouting and the tumult’ would die, ‘the captains and the kings depart.’ “Because I am English by birth and American by a sort of adoption, and because I have vibrated between the two continents for years, I have learned to be impersonal and unpartisan. I was neither American nor English when I told the story. I was merely an intensely interested person who had formed a habit of crossing the Atlantic twice a year. “There have been disastrous international marriages and there have been successful ones; there is no reason why there should not be international marriages at once dignified and splendid--even history-making. Still, I wish I had had room to add to _The Shuttle_ pictures of the thousand other things I find absorbing.” It is not possible to do more than make suggestions as to what books of Mrs. Burnett’s a reader should be sure to dip into. No two set of suggestions would be identical, in all likelihood, but grownups can acquire at least a respectable acquaintance with her work by reading _That Lass o’ Lowrie’s_, _A Fair Barbarian_, _Little Lord Fauntleroy_, _Sara Crewe_, _The Pretty Sister of José_, _In Connection With the De Willoughby Claim_, _The Shuttle_, _The Dawn of a To-Morrow_, _The Secret Garden_, _T. Tembaron_ and _Emily Fox-Seton_. No selective list for children is worth making; give them any or all! BOOKS BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT