



Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed
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Gutenberg (This file was produced from images generously
made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)









                 THE RUSSIAN GRANDMOTHER'S WONDER TALES


                                   BY
                        Louise Seymour Houghton

                             ILLUSTRATED BY
                              W. T. BENDA



                        CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
                                NEW YORK







                                   TO

                         THE FIVE GRANDCHILDREN

                     PHILLIPS, SHERRILL, MARGARET,
                         RUSSELL, AND CAROLINE







PREFACE


The stories which the Russian grandmother told will be found, with
many others, in a German collection of "Tales and Legends of South
Slavonia," put forth in Vienna some twenty years ago by Dr. Friedrich
Kraus, an ardent student of folk-lore. I have sketched in a slight
background of peasant village life as it still exists in some parts of
Southern Russia, because this is the proper setting of these stories;
and I have been careful to clothe them as nearly as I might in the
simple language in which they are told to-day by many a village
fireside in South Slavonia.

I frankly confess to having received from Mr. Joel Chandler Harris
the suggestion which I have thus carried out. It was an unerring
literary instinct which impelled him to put upon the lips of Uncle
Remus and in