This eBook was transcribed by Les Bowler
Thirteen Stories
By
R. B. Cunninghame Graham
Authorof
“Mogreb-El-Acksa,” etc.
London
William Heinemann
1900
p. ivAll rights,includingtranslation, reserved
George Morton Mansel
I Dedicate these sketches, stories,studies, or what do you call them. We havegalloped together over many leagues of Pampa, by day andnight, and therefore I hope he will find the tales(or what do you call them) as near square by the liftsand braces, as is to be expected from a merelandsman.
Acknowledgments are due to:
The “Saturday Review,” the“Westminster Gazette,” and“Justice,” in which papers several of theSketches included in this volume have appeared.
p.viiPREFACE
To-day in warfare all the nicetiesof old-world tactics are fallen into contempt. No word ofoutworks, ravelins, of mamelons, of counter-scarps, of glacis,fascines; none of the terms by means of which Vauban obscured hisart, are even mentioned. Armies fall to and blow suchbrains as they may have out of each other’s heads withoutso much as a salute. And so of literature, your “fewfirst words,” your “avant-propos,” your niceapproaches to the reader, giving him beforehand some taste ofwhat is to follow, have also fallen into disuse. The man ofgenius (and in no age has self-dubbed genius called out so loudin every street, and been accepted at its own appraisement)stuffs you his epoch-making book full of the technicalities ofsome obscure or half-forgotten trade, and rattles on at once,sans introduction, twenty knots an hour, like a torpedoboat. No preface, dedication, not even p. viiianapology pro existentiâ ejus intervening betwixt thebewildered public and the full power of his wit. Agraceless way of doing things, and not comparable to the slowapproach by “prefatory words,” “censura,”“dedication,” by means of which the writers of thepast had half disarmed the critic ere he had read a line. Ilike to fancy to myself the progress of a fight in days gone by,with marching, countermarching, manoeuvring, so to speak, for theweather-gauge, and then the general engagement all by the book ofarithmetic, and squadrons going down like men upon a chessboardafter nice calculation, and like gentlemen.
Who, hidden in a wood, watching a nymph about to bathe, wouldcare to see her strip off her “duds” like anumbrella-case, and bounce into the river like awater-rat?—a lawn upon the grass, a scarf hung on a bush, apetticoat rocked by the wind upon the sward, then the shy tryingof the water with the naked feet, and lastly something flashingin the sun which you could hardly swear you had seen, so rapidlyit passed