If you like she will take you by the hand and lead you away into the enchanted country whither she led other little children years ago when your parents and your grandparents were young. There you will find the same people they found, and see the same sights they saw.

The wonderful carved chair they followed over hill and dale still moves as fast as ever on its magic rollers. The cushion is still in it, and the velvet cover has neither worn nor faded.

Little Snowflower is not a day older for all the years that have passed by since then. The Princess Greedalind, alas! has not grown one whit gentler or less selfish. She still sits there on her throne like an ugly toad bedecked with jewels, demanding everything, and quarrelling with everyone who will not give her what she wants.

Merrymind and Fairyfoot, Childe Charity and the old Shepherd who piped his sheep into wolves and back again at will; they are all there in that enchanted country of the book.

And it is not fields and forests and castles only that the old woman can show you. She can take you down under the depths of the ocean, too, if you like.

Then all is still and strange and muffled by the deep waters overhead. Out from a hidden cave steps the merman trailing his heavy, fishy feet. His garments rustle like the rustle of snakes twisting upon each other, and his hands and arms are crusted with rings and bracelets. His daughters are beautiful, but their eyes are pale and green, and they have but little more warmth or feeling than the fishes that move about them. Such a wealth of treasures as the merman has stored away in his coral caves if you care to look. But they are only to look at and not to touch or you will be in his power for ever.

All the sights of earth and sea, and many other wonders, too, the old blind woman can show you.

And now she has laid aside her distaff and she holds out her hand to you. Are you ready? Do you care to go? Then take hold of her fingers and let us be off into the world of magic and enchanted things.

Katharine Pyle.

Preface

The writer of "Granny's Wonderful Chair" was a poet, and blind. That she was a poet the story tells on every page, but of her blindness it tells not a word. From beginning to end it is filled with pictures; each little tale has its own picturesque setting, its own vividly realised scenery. Her power of visualisation would be easy to understand had she become blind in the later years of her life, when the beauties of the physical world were impressed on her mind; but Frances Browne was blind from infancy. The pictures she gives us in her stories were created, in darkness, from material which came to her only through the words of others. In her work are no blurred lines or uncertainties, her drawing is done with a firm and vigorous hand. It would seem that the completeness of her calamity created, within her, that serenity of spirit which contrives the greatest triumphs in Life and in Art. Her endeavour was to realise the world independently of her own personal emotion and needs. She, who, out of her darkness and poverty, might have touched us so surely with her longing for her birthright of light, for her share of the world's good things, gives help and encouragement to the more fortunate.

In reading the very few details of her life we feel the stimulation as of watching one who, in a desperate fight, wins against great odds.

The odds against Frances Browne were heavy.