PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR

PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR

I have been sick. Now I am better the Doctor makes me lie in bed because of all that Anti-toxin he put in me, which weakens the heart. Anti-toxin isn't a lady, it's a medicine for diphtheria. Aunty May is a lady. She reads me books and plays games with me. But I am tired of books written about nature, and animals, and Indians, and fairies, and I wished out loud that somebody would write a book about a boy, just like me. So to-day Aunty May brought me a big, thick blank book with red covers, and with rings at the back to let me add more paper when I want to, and she told me to write my own story, a little every day.

So that's what I am going to do, and illustrate it with "Zobzees." "Zobzees" are thin dancing people—like this. I invented that name, and a country and a language for them, which only Aunty May and I know. But I am not going to write my book in that. I am going to print it, like other books, but draw "Zobzees" because they are easy; and if nobody else reads it except me and Uncle Burt when he comes home, it will be fun for us, anyway.