Nature stories, legends, and poems appeal to the young reader’s interest in various ways. Some of them suggest or reveal certain facts which stimulate a spirit of investigation and attract the child’s attention to the beauty and mystery of the world. Others serve an excellent purpose by quickening his sense of humour.

Seedtime and harvest have always been seasons of absorbing interest and have furnished the story-teller with rich themes. The selections in “The Emerald Story Book” emphasize the hope and premise of the spring; the stories, legends, and poems in this volume, “The Topaz Story Book,” express the joy and blessing which attend the harvest-time when the fields are rich in golden grain and the orchard boughs bend low with mellow fruit. “The year’s work is done. She walks in gorgeous apparel, looking upon her long labour and her serene eye saith, ‘It is good.’”