The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Book of Wonder, by
Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany

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Title: The Book of Wonder

Author: Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany

Posting Date: October 10, 2010

Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7477]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE BOOK OF WONDER

BY
LORD DUNSANY

CONTENTS

Preface
The Bride of the Man-Horse
Distressing Tale of Thangobrind The Jeweller
The House of the Sphinx
Probable Adventure of the Three Literary Men
The Injudicious Prayers of Pombo the Idolater
The Loot of Bombasharna
Miss Cubbidge and the Dragon Of Romance
The Quest of the Queen's Tears
The Hoard of the Gibbelins
How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles
How One Came, As Was Foretold, to the City Of Never
The Coronation of Mr. Thomas Shap
Chu-Bu and Sheemish
The Wonderful Window
Epilogue

PREFACE

Come with me, ladies and gentlemen who are in any wise weary of
London: come with me: and those that tire at all of the world we know:
for we have new worlds here.

THE BRIDE OF THE MAN-HORSE

In the morning of his two hundred and fiftieth year Shepperalk the
centaur went to the golden coffer, wherein the treasure of the
centaurs was, and taking from it the hoarded amulet that his father,
Jyshak, in the years of his prime, had hammered from mountain gold and
set with opals bartered from the gnomes, he put it upon his wrist, and
said no word, but walked from his mother's cavern. And he took with
him too that clarion of the centaurs, that famous silver horn, that in
its time had summoned to surrender seventeen cities of Man, and for
twenty years had brayed at star-girt walls in the Siege of
Tholdenblarna, the citadel of the gods, what time the centaurs waged
their fabulous war and were not broken by any force of arms, but
retreated slowly in a cloud of dust before the final miracle of the
gods that They brought in Their desperate need from Their ultimate
armoury. He took it and