INTRODUCTION.

The author of this book was the daughter of that Count Rostopchine who was governor of Moscow when it was burned in 1812, and Napoleon was obliged in consequence to make his disastrous retreat from that city. Born in 1799, Sophie de Rostopchine married, in 1821, the Count de Ségur, a son of one of the oldest and proudest families of France. She was a very accomplished and lovable person, and, as her writings attest, she was thoroughly in sympathy with the ways and feelings of children.

She did not begin to publish her stories until she was fifty-seven years of age, but between that date and the time of her death in 1874, she wrote and brought out a great many books for children.

The “Memoirs of a Donkey,” published in 1860, is one of the most popular, wholesome, and entertaining of her books. It is longer in the original than the version here given, as it contains a great number of scenes that could interest only the boys and girls of France; and there are many incidents in which the donkey scarcely figures. We have, therefore, given in this book the story of Neddy, the donkey. His adventures are interesting and amusing enough by themselves, and as there has been nothing quite like them originally written in English, we have included this retelling of the story in our Home and School Classics.