our literature has become saturated through
Christian channels with the traditions of the parent creed.

This collection has been limited to twenty tales. Within the bounds
thus set, an effort has been made to have this book as representative
of national and individual conceptions of the Devil as possible. The
tales have been taken from many times and tongues. Selection has been
made not only among writers, but also among the stories of each
writer. In two instances, however, where the choice was not so easy,
an author is represented by two specimens from his pen.

The stories have been arranged in chronological order to show the
constant and continuous appeal on the part of the Devil to our
story-writers. The mediaeval tale, although published last, was
placed first. For obvious reasons, this story has not been given in
its original form, but in its modernized version. While this is not
meant to be a nursery-book, it has been made _virginibus puerisque_,
and for this reason, selections from Boccaccio, Rabelais and Balzac
could not find their way into these pages. Moreover, as this volume
was limited to narratives in prose, devil's tales in verse by Chaucer,
Hans Sachs and La Fontaine could not be considered, either.
Nevertheless this collection is sufficiently comprehensive to please
all tastes in Devils. The reader will find between the covers of this
book Devils fascinating and fearful, Devils powerful and picturesque,
Devils serious and humorous, Devils pathetic and comic, Devils
phantastic and satiric, Devils gruesome and grotesque. I have tried,
though, to keep them all in good humour throughout the book, and can
accordingly assure the reader that he need fear no harm from an
intimate acquaintance with the diabolical company to which he is
herewith introduced.

MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN.

THE DEVIL IN A NUNNERY[1]

BY FRANCIS OSCAR MANN

[1] Taken by permission from _The Devil in a Nunnery and
other Mediaeval Tales_, by Francis Oscar Mann, published by
P. Dutton & Company, New York, 1914.

Buckingham is as pleasant a shire as a man shall see on a seven days'
journey. Neither was it any less pleasant in the days of our Lord King
Edward, the third of that name, he who fought and put the French to
shameful discomfiture at Crecy and Poitiers and at many another
hard-fought field. May God rest his soul, for he now sleeps in the
great Church at Westminster.