One pleasant summer day, as the fairy-tale lover sat reading a book beneath the low spreading branches of an oak tree, he heard a hum of wings, and looking up startled from his book, he discovered the Fairy Goldenwand standing close by. "Are you still seeking new fairy tales?" said the Fairy Goldenwand. "Yes," said the reader. "Will you write them down if I tell you some really new ones?" said the Fairy. "Oh yes, indeed," said the reader. "And I'll put them into a book;..." "Oh, that will be fine!" said the Fairy Goldenwand...

Henry Austin Dobson, commonly Austin Dobson, was an English poet and essayist. His official career was uneventful, but as a poet and biographer he was distinguished. Those who study his work are struck by its maturity.It was about 1864 that he turned his attention to writing original prose and verse, and some of his earliest work was his best. It was not until 1868 that the appearance of St Paul’s, a magazine edited by Anthony Trollope, gave Harry Dobson an opportunity and an audience; and during the next six years he contributed some of his favourite poems, including “Tu Quoque,” “A Gentleman of the Old School,” “A Dialogue from Plato,” and “Une Marquise...

I should have thought that no preface would have been required to introduce Mrs. Seacole to the British public, or to recommend a book which must, from the circumstances in which the subject of it was placed, be unique in literature. If singleness of heart, true charity, and Christian works; if trials and sufferings, dangers and perils, encountered boldly by a helpless woman on her errand of mercy in the camp and in the battle-field, can excite sympathy or move curiosity, Mary Seacole will have many friends and many readers...