Aunt Kitty's Tales

AUTHOR OF TWO LIVES, OR TO SEEM AND TO BE, CONQUEST AND SELF-CONQUEST, PRAISE AND PRINCIPLE, ETC., ETC.
A NEW REVISED EDITION.
NEW YORK: D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 200 BROADWAY.
PHILADELPHIA: GEO. S. APPLETON, 148 CHESNUT STREET.
M DCCC XLVII.
It has been several years since Aunt Kitty last presented herself to her young friends, yet she hopes that she has not been forgotten by them, and that her reappearance will give them pleasure. She introduces to them in the present volume no new acquaintance, but she offers to them, in one group, all who formerly interested them. Blind Alice and her young benefactress—Jessie Graham and her ardent, generous, but inconsiderate friend, Florence Arnott—Grace and Clara—and Ellen Leslie, will here be found together. They have been carefully prepared for this second presentation to the public by Aunt Kitty's own hand. It is hoped that her efforts for their improvement have not been wholly unsuccessful, and that they will be found not altogether unworthy teachers of those lessons of benevolence and truth, generosity, justice and self-government, which she designed to convey through them.
New York , Feb. 15th, 1847.
Good morning, my young friend! A merry Christmas, or happy New Year, or at least a pleasant holiday to you;—for holiday I hope it is, as it is on such festivals, when there is no danger of lessons being forgotten, that I best love to see around me a group of happy children, all the happier for having Aunt Kitty to direct their plays—to show them the pleasantest walks, or, when they are tired both of playing and walking, to sit with them by the fireside and tell them some entertaining story. I am never however entirely without such young companions. I have always with me an orphan niece—Harriet Armand—who is about ten years old. Her father and mother died when she was quite an infant, and she has ever since been to me as my own child. Then I have another niece—Mary Mackay—just six years old, the merriest little girl on whom the sun ever shone, who, as her father lives quite near me, spends part—her mother says the largest part—of every day with me. Besides these, there are Susan May and Lucy Ellis, who, living in a neat, pretty village near us, seldom let a fine day pass without seeing Harriet and me.