Excerpt from The Sword of Welleran, and Other Stories: With Illustrations by S. H. Sime Where the great plain of Tarphet runs up, as the sea in estuaries, among the Cyresian moun tains, there stood long since the city of Merimna well-nigh among the shadows of the crags. I have never seen a city in the world so beautiful as Merimna seemed to me when first I dreamed of it. It was a marvel Of spires and figures of bronze, and marble fountains, and trophies Of fabulous wars, and broad streets given over wholly to the Beautiful. Right through the centre Of the city there went an avenue fifty strides in width, and along each side of itstood likenesses in bronze of the Kings of all the countries that the people Of Merimna had ever known. At the end of that avenue was a colossal. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.