A Little Book of Profitable Tales

TO MY SEVEREST CRITIC, MY MOST LOYAL ADMIRER, AND MY ONLY DAUGHTER, MARY FRENCH FIELD, THIS LITTLE BOOK OF PROFITABLE TALES IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. E.F.
TO MY SEVEREST CRITIC, MY MOST LOYAL ADMIRER, AND MY ONLY DAUGHTER, MARY FRENCH FIELD, THIS LITTLE BOOK OF PROFITABLE TALES IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. E.F.
INTRODUCTION
I have never read a poem by Mr. Field without feeling personally drawn to the author. Long after I had known him as a poet, I found that he had written in prose little scraps or long essays, which had attracted me in just the same way, when I had met with them in the newspapers, although I had not known who the author was.
All that he writes indeed is quite free from the conventionalisms to which authorship as a profession is sadly liable. Because he is free from them, you read his poems or you read his prose, and are affected as if you met him. If you were riding in a Pullman car with him, or if you were talking with him at breakfast over your coffee, he would say just such things in just this way. If he had any art, it was the art of concealing art. But I do not think that he thought much of art. I do not think that he cared much for what people say about criticism or style. He wrote as he felt, or as he thought, without troubling himself much about method. It is this simplicity, or what it is the fashion of the day to call frankness, which gives a singular charm to his writing.
EDWARD E. HALE.
The Tales in this Little Book
THE FIRST CHRISTMAS TREE
THE SYMBOL AND THE SAINT
THE COMING OF THE PRINCE
THE MOUSE AND THE MOONBEAM
THE DIVELL'S CHRYSTMASS