Édition d'Élite |
Historical TalesThe Romance of RealityByCHARLES MORRISAuthor of "Half-Hours with the Best American Authors,""Tales from the Dramatists," etc. IN FIFTEEN VOLUMESVolume IAmerican |
J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANYPHILADELPHIA AND LONDON |
Copyright, 1893, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. |
PREFACE.
It has become a commonplace remark that fact isoften stranger than fiction. It may be said, as avariant of this, that history is often more romanticthan romance. The pages of the record of man'sdoings are frequently illustrated by entertainingand striking incidents, relief points in the dull monotonyof every-day events, stories fitted to rousethe reader from languid weariness and stir anew inhis veins the pulse of interest in human life. Thereare many such,—dramas on the stage of history, lifescenes that are pictures in action, tales pathetic,stirring, enlivening, full of the element of the unusual,of the stuff the novel and the romance aremade of, yet with the advantage of being actual fact.Incidents of this kind have proved as attractive towriters as to readers. They have dwelt upon themlovingly, embellished them with the charms of rhetoricand occasionally with the inventions of fancy,until what began as fact has often entered far intothe domains of legend and fiction. It may well bethat some of the narratives in the present work havegone through this process. If so, it is simply indicativeof the interest they have awakened in generationsof readers and writers. But the bulk ofthem are fact, so far as history in general can becalled fact, it having been our design to cull fromthe annals of the nations some of their more stirringand romantic incidents, and present them as agallery of pictures that might serve