The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mahatma and the Hare, by H. Rider Haggard

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Title: The Mahatma and the Hare

Author: H. Rider Haggard

Release Date: April 3, 2006 [EBook #2764]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAHATMA AND THE HARE ***

Produced by John Bickers; Dagny; Emma Dudding

THE MAHATMA AND THE HARE

A DREAM STORY

by H. Rider Haggard

"Ultimately a good hare was found which took the field at . . .
There the hounds pressed her, and on the hunt arriving at the edge
of the cliff the hare could be seen crossing the beach and going
right out to sea. A boat was procured, and the master and some
others rowed out to her just as she drowned, and, bringing the
body in, gave it to the hounds. A hare swimming out to sea is a
sight not often witnessed."--_Local paper, January_ 1911.

". . . A long check occurred in the latter part of this hunt, the
hare having laid up in a hedgerow, from which she was at last
evicted by a crack of the whip. Her next place of refuge was a
horse-pond, which she tried to swim, but got stuck in the ice
midway, and was sinking, when the huntsman went in after her. It
was a novel sight to see huntsman and hare being lifted over a
wall out of the pond, the eager pack waiting for their prey behind
the wall."--_Local paper, February_ 1911.

*****

The author supposes that the first of the above extracts must have
impressed him. At any rate, on the night after the reading of it, just
as he went to sleep, or on the following morning just as he awoke, he
cannot tell which, there came to him the title and the outlines of this
fantasy, including the command with which it ends. With a particular
clearness did he seem to see the picture of the Great White Road,
"straight as the way of the Spirit, and broad as the breast of Death,"
and of the little Hare travelling towards the awful Gates.

Like the Mahatma of this fable, he expresses no opinion as to the merits
of the controversy between the Red-faced Man and the Hare that, without
search on his own part, presented itself to his mind in