Five Little Peppers Abroad
Preface
Margaret Sidney
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When the friends of the Pepper family found that the author was firm in her decision to continue their history no further, they brought their appeals for the details of some of those good times that made the "little brown house" an object-lesson.
In these appeals, the parents were as vigorous as the young people for a volume of the stories that Polly told, to keep the children happy in those hard days when her story-telling had to be a large factor in their home-life; and also for a book of their plays and exploits, impossible to be embodied in the continued series of their history, so that all who loved the "Five Little Peppers" might the better study the influences that shaped their lives.
Those requests were complied with; the author realising that the detailed account held values, by which stronger light might be thrown on the family life in the "little brown house."
And now the pressure is brought to bear for a book showing the Little Peppers over the ocean, recorded in "Five Little Peppers Midway." And the author is very glad to comply again; for foreign travel throws a wholly different side-light upon the Pepper family. So here is the book.
It is in no sense to be taken as a story written for a guide-book, --although the author lives in it again her repeated enjoyment of the sights and scenes which are accurately depicted. A "Baedeker," if carefully studied, is really all that is needed as a constant companion to the traveller; while for supplementary helps and suggestions, there are many valuable books along the same line. This volume is given up to the Peppers; and they must live their own lives and tell their own story while abroad just as they choose.
As the author has stated many times, her part is "simply to set down what the Peppers did and said, without trying to make them say or do anything in particular." And so over the ocean they are just as much the makers of their own history as when they first opened the door of the "little brown house" to
Margaret Sidney.