I
try to be of Braddock's mind. I still mean to get my health again;
I still purpose, by hook or crook, this book or the next, to launch
a masterpiece; and I still intend - somehow, some time or other - to
see your face and to hold your hand.
Meanwhile, this little paper traveller goes forth instead, crosses
the great seas and the long plains and the dark mountains, and comes
at last to your door in Monterey, charged with tender greetings.
Pray you, take him in. He comes from a house where (even as in your
own) there are gathered together some of the waifs of our company at
Oakland: a house - for all its outlandish Gaelic name and distant
station - where you are well-beloved.
R. L. S.
Skerryvore,
Bournemouth.
BOOK I - PRINCE ERRANT
CHAPTER I - IN WHICH THE PRINCE DEPARTS ON AN ADVENTURE
You shall seek in vain upon the map of Europe for the bygone state
of Grunewald. An independent principality, an infinitesimal member
of the German Empire, she played, for several centuries, her part in
the discord of Europe; and, at last, in the ripeness of time and at
the spiriting of several bald diplomatists, vanished like a morning
ghost. Less fortunate than Poland, she left not a regret behind
her; and the very memory of her boundaries has faded.
It was a patch of hilly country covered with thick wood. Many
streams took their beginning in the glens of Grunewald, turning
mills for the inhabitants.
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