The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mad Shepherds, by L. P. Jacks

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Title: Mad Shepherds
and Other Human Studies

Author: L. P. Jacks

Illustrator: L. Leslie Brooke

Release Date: February 24, 2010 [EBook #31386]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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MAD SHEPHERDS

_AND OTHER HUMAN STUDIES_

BY L. P. JACKS

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
L. LESLIE BROOKE

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1910

THIS BOOK
IS DEDICATED TO
SIR ROBERT BALL
LL.D., F.R.S.

[Illustration: "SNARLEY BOB" From a Drawing by L. Leslie Brooke]

CONTENTS

MAD SHEPHERDS

1. SHOEMAKER HANKIN

2. SNARLEY BOB ON THE STARS

3. "SNARLEYCHOLOGY," I. THEORETICAL

4. "SNARLEYCHOLOGY," II. EXPERIMENTAL

5. A MIRACLE, I

6. A MIRACLE, II

7. SHEPHERD TOLLER O' CLUN DOWNS

8. SNARLEY BOB'S INVISIBLE COMPANION

9. THE DEATH OF SNARLEY BOB

OTHER HUMAN STUDIES

1. FARMER PERRYMAN'S TALL HAT

2. A GRAVEDIGGER SCENE

3. HOW I TRIED TO ACT THE GOOD SAMARITAN

4. "MACBETH" AND "BANQUO" ON THE BLASTED HEATH

* * * * *

There is nothing that so embases and enthralls the Souls of men, as the
dismall and dreadfull thoughts of their own Mortality, which will not
suffer them to look beyond this short span of Time, to see an houres
length before them, or to look higher than these material Heavens; which
though they could be stretch'd forth to infinity, yet would the space be
too narrow for an enlightened mind, that will not be confined within the
compass of corporeal dimensions. These black Opinions of Death and the
Non-entity of Souls (darker than Hell it self) shrink up the free-born
Spirit which is within us, which would otherwise be dilating and
spreading it self boundlessly beyond all Finite Being: and when these
sorry pinching mists are once blown away, it finds this narrow sphear of
Being to give way before it; and having once se