Domestic Pleasures or the Happy Fire-Side (c. 1900)

"When I was a child, if a new book were given to me, I recollect, my first question invariably was:--"Is this true." If the answer were in the affirmative, the volume immediately assumed, in my eyes, a new value, and was perused with far greater interest than a story merely fictitious. Now, as I am very desirous that you should take up this little volume with a prepossession in its favour, I must inform you, that the characters of the children here pourtrayed, are all _real_ characters. "