The Project Gutenberg EBook of Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories, by
Arthur Christopher Benson

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Title: Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories
Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset

Author: Arthur Christopher Benson

Release Date: May 19, 2007 [EBook #21536]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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PAUL THE MINSTREL
AND OTHER STORIES

Reprinted from _The Hill of Trouble_
and _The Isles of Sunset_

BY

ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON

FELLOW OF MAGDALENE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

LONDON

SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE

1911

[All rights reserved]

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.

At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

_"I mean by a picture a beautiful, romantic dream of something that
never was, never will be--in a light better than any light that ever
shone--in a land no one can define or remember, only desire--and the
forms divinely beautiful--and then I wake up with the waking of
Brynhild."_

SIR E. BURNE-JONES

PREFACE

These stories were all written at a very happy time of my life, and
they were first published when I was a master at Eton with a
boarding-house. A house-master is not always a happy man. It is an
anxious business at best. Boys are very unaccountable creatures, and
the years between boyhood and adolescence are apt to represent an
irresponsible mood. From the quiet childhood at home the boys have
passed to what is now, most happily, in the majority of cases, a
carefully guarded and sheltered atmosphere--the private school. My own
private school was of the old-fashioned type,