INTRODUCTION

A FEW years ago the readers of Wee Willie Winkie detected a new vein running through the editorial notes and announcements which prefaced the monthly collection of juvenile literary efforts which make up their little magazine.

There was an originality and a humour which they had not noticed before, and competitions were suggested to them of a type for a repetition of which they clamoured. And then presently a new serial story began, and the hairbreadth escapes of that immortal monkey which it recorded were breathlessly followed by Wee Willie Winkie’s army of bairns all over the world, and, when it was concluded, so numerous were the entreaties for a sequel, that compulsion had to be resorted to in order to secure the revelation of the later life of the hero, under a new name. And now at last the editors who were responsible for the periodical referred to have to make a confession.

Once upon a time they both, mother and daughter, forsook their office and went away to Canada for several months in 1891, and during that time their joint editorial chair was occupied by no other than Professor Henry Drummond. And now our readers will understand to whom they are indebted for the quaint sayings and funny stories and competitions, betokening some one who ‘understood’ boys, and girls too. And they will be grateful to a certain contributor who failed to send his copy in time for the monthly issue on one occasion, and so forced the then editor to sit down and write Something.

It was the first time he had ever tried to write fiction, and as the story grew under his pen he began to realise the joy of creation. And so it was that in spite of his playful deprecation of ‘such nonsense’ being printed, the adventures of The Monkey that would not Kill came to be told, and we know that we can do our old friends and readers no greater kindness than to dedicate these chronicles to them in permanent form, in memory of one to whom Wee Willie and his ‘bairns’ were ever a subject of affectionate interest.

ISHBEL ABERDEEN,

MARJORIE A. H. GORDON,

Editors of Wee Willie Winkie.

GOVERNMENT HOUSE,
OTTAWA, November 1898