The Red Romance Book

Roman

dren and

k black book, half as tall as himself, out of a bookcase, and sit down and read it. The name of the book was Polexander. So he sat and sobbed over Polexander, because it was so very dull and so very long. There were 800 pages, and he had

he stuck to it like the other boy who stood by the burning deck long after it was ‘time for

hould stop reading a book as soon as he finds that he does not like it, just as you are not expected to eat more mutton than you want to eat. Lesson books are another thing; you have to read them, and if you do not you will get into trouble. They are not

chief business of gentlemen was to ride about in full armour, fighting, while ladies sat at home doing embroidery work, or going to see the men tilt at tournaments, just as they go to see cricket matches now. But

eir mothers’ maidens to spin and embroider, or make simple medicines from the common herbs, and the boys learnt to ride and tilt, and shoot with bows and arrows; but their tasks done, no one paid any further heed to them. They had very few games, and in the long winter evenings the man who went from house to house, telling or singing the tales of brave deeds, must have been welcome indeed. From him the childr

th no name, the old fairy adventures were said to have happened to people with names: King Arthur, or Charlemagne,

rfs, and magicians, and enchanted castles, and dragons and flying horses. These romances were the novels of the people of the Middle Ages, about whom you can read in the History Books of Mrs. Markham. They were not much like the novels which come

the drawing-rooms of civilised men and women.’ You do not want to read any more of that novel. It is not at all like a good old romance of knig

al people. Some are from the ancient French romances of the adventures of Charlemagne, and his peers and paladins. Some are from later Italian poems of the same kind. ‘Cupid and Psyche’ is older, and so is the story of the man

such as Una and Bradamante, who kept patient and true, in spite of fierce trials and temptations. I have only related a few

sed and less interesting. Don Quixote was laughed at, because he came too late into too old a world. But he was as brave and good a knight as the best paladin of them all. So about the knights and

ead ‘Ivanhoe,’ by Sir Walter Scott, for

ook were done by Mrs. Lan

ng.