From the AUTHOR'S NOTE. In preparing this story of Colonial Days the best histories and biographies have been consulted and many bits of folklore unearthed in order to produce as true a picture as possible of those simple early times, while many a veritable incident has been interwoven with the fiction. The Indian myths are those that were handed down by the Native Americsans from father to son, and to J. K. Paulding's "Book of St. Nicholas" am I indebted for the quaint legend of the patron saint of the New Netherlands as related by Nicholas Bayard. Catharine Dubois, the pirate Captain and a few minor characters were real personages who "lived and moved and had their being" in the middle of the seventeenth century. It is, then, with the hope that "A Little Colonial Dame" may win favor in the sight of her descendants and that she and her friends, white, black, and red, may help to revive fresh interest in the honest sturdy settlers of Manhattan Island, that this story of their joys and sorrows, festivals and sports is given to the young people of today. -Agnes Carr Sage