" . . . and now the swordsman met," said the storyteller, "and the ground echoed beneath their rapid footfalls as they stamped around. Then there was a lunge and a sharp nerve-tingling scrape as one blade ran along the other; and then, without a groan, down fell one of these brave warriors flat upon his back upon the grass, the wild flowers, and bits of bark. "Instantly the impulses of a woman flashed through every vein and nerve of that onlooking girl. Springing out from her leafy concealment, she knelt beside the fallen man. The other soldier sprang back; for it seemed as though there had suddenly appeared before him a being from another world!" Tales of far-off places, kings, and hermit's daughters spill off the lips of the gardeners and their visitors, in this vibrant concoction by American novelist Frank R. Stockton (1834-1902), author of the popular Rudder Grange.

Author Biography

Frank Richard Stockton (1834 - 1902) was an American writer and humorist, best known today for a series of innovative children's fairy tales that were widely popular during the last decades of the 19th century. Stockton avoided the didactic moralizing common to children's stories of the time. Instead, he humorously poked fun at greed, violence, abuse of power and other human foibles, describing his fantastic characters' adventures in a charming, matter-of-fact way in stories like "The Griffin and the Minor Canon" (1885) and "The Bee-Man of Orn" (1887). These last two stories were republished in 1963 and 1964, respectively, in editions illustrated by Maurice Sendak. "The Griffin and the Minor Canon" won a Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1963. His 1895 adventure novel The Adventures of Captain Horn was the third-best selling book in the United States in 1895.