The Red True Story Book (ePub)

It is hard to tell what the children would do without Mr. Andrew Lang's contributions to their entertainment. Much as he writes for their elders, he never forgets the little people, and as regularly as Christmas comes round he sends them a literary gift. The Red True Story Book seems interesting to one of the untutored elders, whose travels no longer take him into fairyland; although there will doubtless be plenty of boys and girls to disagree with such a judgment. To these the realm of Prince Prigio will be far more real than the South Africa of today or the France of the fifteenth century; truth is so much stranger than fiction, and these tales of heroism and self-sacrifice are so much more romantic than any manufactured stories. What could be more splendid, more thrilling, than this story of "Wilson's Last Fight," as told here by Mr. Rider Haggard. The magnificent mettle of these men, and their brave acceptance of their fate, called forth from the Zulu chieftain who slaughtered them the tribute that " they were men who died like men, men whose fathers were men." This human document is followed by Mr. Lang's narrative of the '' Life and Death of Joan the Maid," and the nobility of her disinterested devotion to her country is vividly brought out. Aside from these, the stories for the most part are unfamiliar but eminently worthy of enduring fame. A few tell of heroes whose deeds are mentioned in the histories that children study, but without the detail that makes them picturesque and vivid. For the purpose of bringing these stories to life, Mr. Lang's compilation is valuable. Mr. Henry J. Ford illustrates the book with many spirited drawings.

This book is fully illustrated and annotated with a rare extensive biographical sketch of the author, Andrew Lang, written by Sir Edmund Gosse, CB, a contemporary poet and writer.