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         [Illustration: "And sing to the praise of the Doll"]


                     _CHILDREN'S CRIMSON SERIES_


                           PINAFORE PALACE


                                  BY

                         KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN

                                 AND

                         NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH






                 GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK




              _Copyright, 1907, by The McClure Company_

       *       *       *       *       *




PREFACE


TO THE MOTHER

    _"A Court as of angels,
    A public not to be bribed,
    Not to be entreated,
    Not to be overawed."_

_Such is the audience--in long clothes or short frocks, in pinafores
or kilts, or in the brief trousers that bespeak the budding man--such
is the crowing, laughing court, the toddling public that awaits these
verses._

_Every home, large or small, poor or rich, that has a child in it, is
a Pinafore Palace, and we have borrowed the phrase from one of
childhood's most whimsical and devoted poets-laureate, thinking no
other words would so well express our meaning._

_If the two main divisions of the book--"The Royal Baby" and "Little
Prince and Princess"--should seem to you a trifle sentimental it will
be because you forget for the moment the gayety and humor of the
title with its delightful assumptions of regal dignity and state.
Granted the Palace itself, everything else falls easily into line, and
if you cannot readily concede the royal birth and bearing of your
neighbor's child you will see nothing strange in thinking of your own
nursling as little prince or princess, and so you will be able to
accept gracefully the sobriquet of Queen Mother, which is yours by the
same invincible logic!_

_Oh, yes, we allow that instead of being gravely editorial in our
attitude, we have played with the title, as well as with all the
sub-titles and classifications, feeling that it was the next
pleasantest thing to playing with the babies themselves. It was so
delightful to re-read the well-loved rhymes of our own childhood and
try to find others worthy to put beside them; so delicious to imagine
the hundreds of young mothers who would meet their old favorites in
these particular pages; and so inspiring to think of the thousands of
new babies whose first hearing of nursery classics would be associated
with this red-covered volume, that we found ourselves in a joyous mood
which we hope will be contagious. Nothing is surer than that a certain
gayety of heart and mind constitute the most wholesome climate for
young children. "The baby whose mother has not charmed him in his
cradle with rhyme and song has no enchanting dreams; he is not gay and
he will never be a great musician," so runs the old Swiss saying._

_Youthful mothers, beautifully and properly serious about their
strange new duties and responsibilities, need not fear that Mother
Goose is anything but healthful nonsense. She holds a place all her
own, and the years that have rolled over her head (some of the rhymes
going back to the sixteenth century) only give her a firmer footing
among the immortals. There are no real substitutes for her unique
rhymes, neither can they be added to nor imitated; for the world
nowadays is seemingly too sophisticated to frame just this sort of
merry, light-hearted, irresponsible verse which has mellowed with the
years. "These ancient rhymes," says Andrew Lang, "are smooth stones
from the brook of time, worn round by constant friction of tongues
long silent."_

_Nor is your use of this "light literature of the infant scholar" in
the nursery without purpose or value. You are developing ear, mind,
and heart, and laying a foundation for a later love of the best things
in poetry. Whatever else we may do or leave undone, if we wish to
widen the spiritual horizon of our children let us not close the
windows on the emotional and imaginative sides. "There is in every one
of us a poet whom the man has outlived." Do not let the poetic
instinct die of inanition; keep it alive in the child by feeding his
youthful ardor, strengthening his insight, guarding the sensitiveness
and delicacy of his early impressions, and cherishing the fancies that
are indeed "the trailing clouds of glory" he brings with him "from God
who is his home."_

_The rhythm of verse will charm his senses even in his baby days;
later on he will feel the beauty of some exquisite lyric phrase as
keenly as you do, for the ear will have been opened and will be
satisfied only with what is finest and best._

_The second division of the book "Little Prince and Princess" will
take the children out of the nursery into the garden, the farmyard,
and the world outside the Palace, where they will meet and play with
their fellows in an ever-widening circle of social activity. "Baby's
Hush-a-byes" in cradle or mother's lap will now give place to the
quiet cribside talks called "The Palace Bed Time" and "The Queen
Mother's Counsel"; and in the story hour "The Palace Jest-Book" will
furnish merriment for the youngsters who laughed the year before over
the simpler nonsense of Mother Goose._

_When the pinafores themselves are cast aside Pinafore Palace will be
outgrown, and you can find something better suited to the developing
requirements of the nursery folk in "The Posy Ring." Then the third
volume in our series--"Golden Numbers"--will give boys and girls from
ten to fifteen a taste of all the best and soundest poetry suitable to
their age, and after that they may enter on their full birthright,
"the rich deposit of the centuries."_

_No greater love for a task nor happiness in doing it, no more ardent
wish to please a child or meet a mother's need, ever went into a book
than have been wrought into this volume and its three predecessors. We
hope that it will find its way into the nurseries where wealth has
provided every means of ministering to the young child's growth in
body, mind, and soul; and if some of the Pinafore Pal