HOW I CAME 

 TO WRITE THIS BOOK 



WHEN my sons and daughter were little 

 they, like other children, wanted me to 

 tell them stories; and as I had never 

 read much fiction and was not very imaginative, 

 I used to describe how things were made and relate 

 the simple adventures of my limited travels. But 

 best of all they liked the stories of my boyhood 

 and the tales of the neighborhood in which I was 

 born and grew to manhood. The country of my 

 nativity East Varick, Seneca County, New York 

 is situated on the west bank of Cayuga Lake, 

 about opposite the town of Aurora, and when they 

 went there later to visit their relatives it appeared 

 to be an old settled place. But to me it always had 

 the glamour of a pioneer region, for it was a wil- 

 derness when my grandparents came from New 

 Jersey to settle there in 1812, and the tales of 

 their experiences and of my parents' early life had 

 all the picturesqueness of western adventure. 



Since I retired from my professorship at Cornell 

 University in 1903 and moved to California, my 

 children have repeatedly asked me to write out in 



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