The Beggar Princess (Fairy Tale Heat Book 4) Books Pdf Filel

Our personal life was as free as that of our instructors. There were no college dormitories; we lived where we could and as we could. I took rooms with an old couple, early settlers in Lincoln, who had married off their children and now lived quietly in their house at the edge of town, near the open country. The house was inconveniently situated for students, and on that account I got two rooms for the price of one. My bedroom, originally a linen closet, was unheated and was barely large enough to contain my cot bed, but it enabled me to call the other room my study. The dresser, and the great walnut wardrobe which held all my clothes, even my hats and shoes, I had pushed out of the way, and I considered them non-existent, as children eliminate incongruous objects when they are playing house. I worked at a commodious green-topped table placed directly in front of the west window which looked out over the prairie. In the corner at my right were all my books, in shelves I had made and painted myself. On the blank wall at my left the dark, old-fashioned wall-paper was covered by a large map of ancient Rome, the work of some German scholar. Cleric had ordered it for me when he was sending for books from abroad. Over the bookcase hung a photograph of the Tragic Theater at Pompeii which he had given me from his collection.

The Beggar Princess (Fairy Tale Heat Book 4) Books Pdf Filel

Of all the rooms in the house, the Little Bookroomwas yielded up to books as an untended garden is left toits flowers and weeds. There was no selection or senseof order here. In dining-room, study, and nursery therewas choice and arrangement; but the Little Bookroomgathered to itself a motley crew of strays and vagabonds,outcasts from the ordered shelves below, the overflow ofparcels bought wholesale by my father in the sales-rooms.Much trash, and more treasure. Riff-raff and gentlefolkand noblemen. A lottery, a lucky dip for a child who hadnever been forbidden to handle anything between covers.That dusty bookroom, whose windows were never opened,through whose panes the summer sun struck a dingy shaftwhere gold specks danced and shimmered, opened magiccasements for me through which I looked out on otherworlds and times than those I lived in: worlds filled withpoetry and prose and fact and fantasy. There were oldplays and histories, and old romances; superstitions,legends, and what are called the Curiosities of Literature.There was a book called Florentine Nights that fascinatedme; and another called The Tales of Hoffmann thatfrightened me; and one called The Amber Witch thatwas not in the least like the witches I was used to in thefairy-tales I loved.

There was in the village a simpleton who wasnot the ordinary type of village idiot, byany means. He was the Schoolmaster'sson, and had been one of those precociouschildren of whom everything or nothingmay be hoped. His father hoped everything, and forcedhim to live in his books; and, when the child had reachedthe age of ten, saw the end of his hopes. It was not thatthe boy's bright wits turned dull, he lost them altogether.Well, but did he? He sat in the fields, smiling a greatdeal and talking seldom, until some chance loosed histongue; then he talked without pause, till he came tohis stop, like an old musical box that everybody thinks isout of order, and, unexpectedly kicked, plays out itstune. One never knew what chance kick would setSimple Willie going. In books he took no more interestat all. Sometimes his father put under his eyes one thathad been his delight, but he glanced indifferently at theold tales and records, wandered away, and picked up thedaily paper. He generally dropped it very soon; butoccasionally his eye seemed chained by a paragraph,usually of a trifling character, and he would stare at it foran hour.