Opening material

[Illustration: "TWO CHILDREN SAT ON THE GRASS UNDER THE LILACS"

(_See page 2_)]

Our Little Canadian Cousin

By Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald

_Illustrated by_ L. J. Bridgman

[Illustration]

Preface

IN "Our Little Canadian Cousin," my intention has been to tell, in a general way, although with a defined local setting, the story of Canadian home life. To Canadians, _home life_ means not merely sitting at a huge fireplace, or brewing and baking in a wide country kitchen, or dancing of an evening, or teaching, or sewing; but it means the great outdoor life--sleighing, skating, snow-shoeing, hunting, canoeing, and, above all, "camping out"--the joys that belong to a vast, uncrowded country, where there is "room to play."

This wide and beautiful Canadian Dominion possesses, of course, a great variety of climate and of scenery. To treat at all adequately of those things, or of the country's picturesque and romantic history, would require far more scope than is afforded by this one small story.

List of Illustrations

PAGE

"TWO CHILDREN SAT ON THE GRASS UNDER THE LILACS" (_See page 2_) _Frontispiece_

FREDERICTON 22

IN THE GOVERNMENT HOUSE GROUNDS 28

"THE TREE-CLAD SHORES WORE A FAIRY GLAMOUR" 47

"A GREAT BONFIRE WAS BUILT" 64

"NOTHING, DORA THOUGHT, COULD BE MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN THOSE WOODS IN WINTER" 99