Read Online Twilight Land by Howard Pyle - Free Book Online

believe,” said he, “there would be a grain of harm in my peeping inside that door; all the same, I will not do it. I will just go down and peep through the key-hole.” So off he went to do as he said; but there was no key-hole to that door, either. “Why, look!” said he, “it is just like the door at the rich man’s house over yonder; I wonder if it is the same inside as outside,” and he opened the door and peeped in. Yes; there was the long passage and the spark of light at the far end, as though the sun were shining. He cocked his head to one side and listened. “Yes,” said he, “I think I hear thewater rushing, but I am not sure; I will just go a little farther in and listen,” and so he entered and closed the door behind him. Well, he went on and on until—pop! there he was out at the farther end, and before he knew what he was about he had stepped out upon the sea-shore, just as he had done before.
    Whiz! Whirr! Away flew the Fiddler like a bullet, and there was Ill-Luck carrying him by the belt again. Away they sped, over hill and valley, over moor and mountain, until the Fiddler’s head grew so dizzy that he had to shut his eyes. Suddenly Ill-Luck let him drop, and down he fell—thump! bump!—on the hard ground. Then he opened his eyes and sat up, and, lo and behold! there he was, under the oak tree whence he had started in the first place. There lay his fiddle, just as he had left it. He picked it up and ran his fingers over the strings—thrum, twang! Then he got to his feet and brushed the dirt and grass from his knees. He tucked his fiddle under his arm, and off he stepped upon the way he had been going at first.
    “Just to think!” said he, “I would either have been the richest man in the world, or else I would have been a king, if it had not been for Ill-Luck.”
    And that is the way we all of us talk.

DR. FAUSTUS had sat all the while neither drinking ale nor smoking tobacco, but with his hands folded, and in silence. “I know not why it is,” said he, “but that story of yours, my friend, brings to my mind a story of a man whom I once knew—a great magician in his time, and a necromancer and a chemist and an alchemist and mathematician and a rhetorician, an astronomer, an astrologer, and a philosopher as well.”
    “’Tis a long list of excellency,” said old Bidpai
.
    “’Tis not as long as was his head,” said Dr. Faustus
.
    “It would be good for us all to hear a story of such a man,” said old Bidpai
.
    “Nay,” said Dr. Faustus, “the story is not altogether of the man himself, but rather of a pupil who came to learn wisdom of him.”
    “And the name of your story is what?” said Fortunatus
.
    “It hath no name,” said Dr. Faustus
.
    “Nay,” said St. George, “everything must have a name.”
    “It hath no name,” said Dr. Faustus. “But I shall give it a name, and it shall be—

EMPTY BOTTLES
    I
n the old, old days when men were wiser than they are in these times, there lived a great philosopher and magician, by name Nicholas Flamel. Not only did he know all the actual sciences, but the black arts as well, and magic, and what not. He conjured demons so that when a body passed the house of a moonlight night a body might see imps, great and small, little and big, sitting on the chimney stacks and the ridge-pole, clattering their heels on the tiles and chatting together.
    He could change iron and lead into silver and gold; he discovered the elixir of life, and might have been living even to this day had he thought it worth while to do so.
    There was a student at the university whose name was Gebhart, who was so well acquainted with algebra and geometrythat he could tell at a single glance how many drops of water there were in a bottle of wine. As for Latin and Greek—he could patter them off like his A B C’s. Nevertheless, he was not satisfied with the things he knew, but was for learning the things that no schools could teach him. So one day he came