Children I Have Known and Giovanni and the Other Paperback -

From the publisher

From the INTRODUCTION.
All my life I have made stories, and since I was seven years old I have written them. I suppose everyone has his own way of looking at things. I think a man or woman who is an artist sees almost everything as a picture. Sunset and sunrise, country and town groups, children playing, older people at work, all form themselves into pictures when an artist looks at them. In the same way it happens that when I see a scene, an incident, a person, I find myself quite naturally and without any conscious effort looking for the story in it. I don't know how many such stories pass through my mind in a day. Some of them merely flit through like birds across the sky, and are forgotten, but there are some that stay or at least leave traces. And I was thinking about this a few days ago, and calling out of the shadows a number of children-some of whom, though only seen for a few moments, have remained quite distinct memories to me, and seem like little friends I would like to know more about. I cate for children so much, and am so interested in them, that when I see a small or big boy or girl I feel as if somehow I was part of them, and we could perfectly understand each other if we had time to talk. It does not matter where or what the child is, it is all the same. He may be a tiny news-boy in New York, a little fellow with sun-bleached hair I find in the mountains of North Carolina, a poor little eager man waiting in the mud and drizzling rain in a crowded London street, and rushing to open my carriage door in hope of being given a few coppers; a beautiful little soft-eyed, curly-haired beggar in Rome, lingering in the sun until I drive out of the court-yard of my hotel that he may run after me laughing as he calls out "Soldi, Signora"-quite sure that he is so pretty and coaxing that he need not pretend to look miserable (which he is not at all) and that the soldi will be thrown tinkling on the pavement. It is the same thing whoever they are. I belong to them and they belong to me. The feeling that I understand them I think exists so strongly, because of a little girl I once knew ever so many years ago. Curiously enough I am not quite fixed in my idea of how long ago it was. Sometimes I think it was a thousand years since, and sometimes I think it must not have been more than a week ago. I knew her very, very well; I lived with her, dined with her, slept with her, and knew every tiniest and greatest thought she had. I knew what she thought of the grown-up people and their ways; I knew what made her lose her little temper, and what made her happy; I knew the stories she made up for herself about her dolls, and the books whose leaves she was so fond of sitting and turning over and over before she could read at all. (There was a queer little flat geography she adored because it felt so nice to hold it and to turn the leaves over.) But if I do not stop I shall begin to tell you stories about her, and I must not begin with her-I must end with her or edge her in among those more important than she is, if I talk about her at all-because her little name was Frances Hodgson, and we all know it is not good taste to occupy public attention with oneself. I mention her now because I remember so clearly those years when she was a child and thought and reasoned and dreamed and even suffered in her queer little way, and it is this remembering which draws me so close to the children and makes me believe I know what they feel....