All in all it seems like a fairly standard children's book to me, but judging by the language it's fairly old. Nobody would talk like that nowadays.
Judging by the dedication from 1899, too. >_o
But yeah, that's really neat! Thanks to both of you for sharing and translating, respectively. It's always cool seeing old art and stories and such sticking around. :3
Side note, my own happy. Just finished earning the slowest and most arduous $300 of my freelance career. Got the contract right away, then weeks spent waiting for this client to fund the project. I put up examples for feedback at various milestones, and waited for weeks again for feedback and the go ahead to continue. Then, once I was done (60 work hours in to a "12 hour" charity job), hearing said client ask to renegotiate such that I do TWICE that work again on the same budget, trying to explain that he was already getting what's a $5,000-10,000 product in this line of work (that's the low end) for virtually free, waiting for a response, more waiting for a response, seeing the project get automatically unfunded due to the MONTH that'd now elapsed since he vanished and the contract was due to be completed, more time spent issuing a request for it to be refunded and for arbitration from the company that helps me freelance which was granted, FINALLY hearing from my client, waiting for one final week until days before the job automatically paid out to me in his absence (the company had sided with me), and at long last confirming and being paid for the finished product by the client at the last minute.
It's finally done! Whatever I spend this on, it'd better be something good. This was So. Frigging. Stupid.