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THE BOOK OF WONDER
by
Lord Dunsany

PREFACE
Come with me, ladies and gentlemen who are in any wise weary of London: come with me: and those that tire at all of the world we know: for we have new worlds here.


THE BRIDE OF THE MAN-HORSE

DISTRESSING TALE OF THANGOBRIND THE JEWELLER

THE HOUSE OF THE SPHINX

PROBABLE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE LITERARY MEN

THE INJUDICOUS PRAYERS OF POMBO THE IDOLATER

THE LOOT OF BOMBASHARNA

MISS CUBBIDGE AND THE DRAGON OF ROMANCE

THE QUEST OF THE QUEEN'S TEARS

THE HOARD OF THE GIBBELINS

HOW NUTH WOULD HAVE PRACTISED HIS ART UPON THE GNOLES

HOW ONE CAME, AS WAS FORETOLD, TO THE CITY OF NEVER

THE CORONATION OF MR. THOMAS SHAP

CHU-BU AND SHEEMISH

THE WONDERFUL WINDOW


EPILOGUE
Here the fourteenth Episode of the Book of Wonder endeth and here the relating of the Chronicles of Little Adventures at the Edge of the World. I take farewell of my readers. But it may be we shall even meet again, for it is still to be told how the gnomes robbed the fairies, and of the vengeance that the fairies took, and how even the gods themselves were troubled thereby in their sleep; and how the King of Ool insulted the troubadours, thinking himself safe among his scores of archers and hundreds of halberdiers, and how the troubadours stole to his towers by night, and under his battlements by the light of the moon made that king ridiculous for ever in song. But for this I must first return to the Edge of the World. Behold, the caravans start.








THE BRIDE OF THE MAN-HORSE

In the morning of his two hundred and fiftieth year Shepperalk the centaur went to the golden coffer, wherein the treasure of the centaurs was, and taking from it the hoarded amulet that his father, Jyshak, in the year of his prime, had hammered from mountain gold and set with opals bartered from the gnomes, he put it upon his wrist, and said no word, but walked from his mother's cavern. And he took with him too that clarion of the centaurs, that famous silver horn, that in its time had summoned to surrender seventeen cities of Man, and for twenty years had brayed at star-girt walls in the Siege of Tholdenblarna, the citadel of the gods, what time the centaurs waged their fabulous war and were not broken by any force of arms, but retreated slowly in a cloud of dust before the final miracle of the gods that They brought in Their desperate need from Their ultimate armoury. He took it and strode away, and his mother only sighed and let him go.