The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red Romance Book, by Various

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Title: The Red Romance Book

Author: Various

Editor: Andrew Lang

Illustrator: Henry Ford

Release Date: February 15, 2008 [EBook #24624]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED ROMANCE BOOK ***

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Transcriber's Note

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. A list of changes is
found at the end of the book.

[Illustration: HOW GUNNAR MET HALLGERDA]

THE
RED ROMANCE BOOK

EDITED BY
ANDREW LANG

[Illustration]

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
FOURTH AVENUE AND 30TH STREET, NEW YORK

1921

_PREFACE_

WHAT ROMANCES ARE

(TO CHILDREN AND OTHERS)

I once read a book about a poor little lonely boy in a great house with
a large library. This boy was pale, dull, and moping. Nobody knew what
was the matter with him. But somebody tracked him into the library and
saw him take a huge thick black book, half as tall as himself, out of a
bookcase, and sit down and read it. The name of the book was
_Polexander_. So he sat and sobbed over _Polexander_, because it was so
very dull and so very long. There were 800 pages, and he had only read
sixty-seven. But some very stupid grown-up person had told him that he
must always begin a book at the beginning, and, if he once began, he
must read every word of it, and read nothing else till he had finished
every word of it.

The boy saw that he would die of weariness long before he reached the
end of _Polexander_, but he stuck to it like the other boy who stood by
the burning deck long after it was 'time for him to go.' So _Polexander_
was taken away from him and locked up, and so his life was saved.

Now, in the first place _Polexander_ was a romance, but it was not like
the romances in this bo