Daisy Ashford: Her Book by Ashford and Ashford

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Transcriber's Note on the Text:

This book was written by a young girl. There are many spelling and punctuation errors that have all been retained with the rare exception of clear printer's error such as He,en on page 164. These three corrections are listed at the end of the text. For each story, the title was written on a separate page and then repeated on the next page. The second of these was omitted to avoid redundancy for the reader. The remaining text is intact, for example, on page 335, the chapter MR. HOSE MAKES ENQUIRIES starts with a small letter, most dialogue has no punctuation at the end and is often missing at least one quotation mark. Missing letters in the original are denoted by asterisks in the text.

DAISY ASHFORD: HER BOOK

A COLLECTION OF THE REMAINING NOVELS BY THE AUTHOR OF

"THE YOUNG VISITERS,"

TOGETHER WITH "THE JEALOUS GOVERNES"

BY ANGELA ASHFORD

WITH A PREFACE BY

IRVIN S. COBB

[Illustration]

NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

_Copyright, 1920, By George H. Doran Company_

_Printed in the United States of America_

PREFACE

BY IRVIN S. COBB

The role of discoverer is pleasing, nearly always, and more especially in its reactions is it pleasing. The actual performance of discovery may be fraught with hardships and with inconveniences and even with perils; as witness Christopher Columbus making his first voyage over this way in a walloping window-blind of a tub of a ship and his last one back with chains at his wrists and ankles; as witness Hendrick Hudson; as witness Dr. Harvey's unfortunate position in the eye of constituted authority after he had discovered the circulation of the blood; as witness the lamentable consequences to whoever it was who, probably by the process of eating a mess of miscellaneous wild fungoids, disclosed to a bereaved family and a benefited world the important fact that certain mushrooms were nourishing and certain toadstools were fatal.

To your true discoverer the compensations of his trade come when he points with pride to the continent or the great natural fact or the new author he discovered and cries aloud before all creation: "See what I have found!"

So, aside from the compliment and the honor of it, I feel added gratification and added pleasure that I should be invited to write a foreword for the first American edition of Miss Daisy Ashford's second book. You see, I claim the distinction of having been the first person in America other than its publisher and my friend Mr. George H. Doran to read the manuscript of that immortal work "The Young Visiters." If I did not actually discover Miss Ashford, at the age of nine when she wrote "The Young Visiters"--for indeed no one appears to have discovered her then excepting perhaps her parents--at least I had a hand in discovering her on this side of the Atlantic ocean at a time when mention of her name, which now is so famous a name, meant nothing to the casual hearer.

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