One Day A sequel to \'Three Weeks\'
FOREWORD TO MY AMERICAN FRIENDS Now after spending some very pleasant weeks in your interesting country, I feel sure that this book will find many sympathetic readers in America. Quite naturally it will be discussed; some, doubtless, will censure it--and unjustly; others will believe with me that the tale teaches a great moral lesson. Born as the Boy was born, the end which Fate forced upon him, to me, was inevitable. Each word and act of the three weeks of his parents' love-idyl must reflect in the character and life of the child. Little by little the baby King grew before my mental vision until I saw at last there was no escape from his importunity and I allowed the insistent Boy--masterful even from his inception--to shape himself at his own sweet will. Thus he became the hero of my study. This is not a book for children or fools--but for men and women who can grasp the underlying principle of morality which has been uppermost in my mind as I wrote. Those who can see beyond the outburst of passion--the overmastering belief in the power of love to justify all
[1]Autolycus was a famous mountain chief who lived in rude state on the
slopes of Parnassus and was noted for his courage and cunning. He was
the grandfather of Odysseus (Ulysses), to whom the story is supposed to
have been related.
THE CHOICE OF HERCULES
When Hercules was a fair-faced youth, and life was all before him, he
went out one morning to do an errand for his stepfather. But as he
walked his heart was full of bitter thoughts; and he murmured because
others no better than himself were living in ease and pleasure, while
for him there was naught but a life of labor and pain.
As he thought upon these things, he came to a place where two roads
met; and he stopped, not certain which one to take.
The road on his right was hilly and rough; there was no beauty in it or
about it: but he saw that it led straight toward the blue mountains in
the far distance.
The road on his left was broad and smooth, with shade trees on either
side, where sang an innumerable choir of birds; and it went winding
among green meadows, where bloomed countless flowers: but it ended in
FOREWORD TO MY AMERICAN FRIENDS Now after spending some very pleasant weeks in your interesting country, I feel sure that this book will find many sympathetic readers in America. Quite naturally it will be discussed; some, doubtless, will censure it--and unjustly; others will believe with me that the tale teaches a great moral lesson. Born as the Boy was born, the end which Fate forced upon him, to me, was inevitable. Each word and act of the three weeks of his parents' love-idyl must reflect in the character and life of the child. Little by little the baby King grew before my mental vision until I saw at last there was no escape from his importunity and I allowed the insistent Boy--masterful even from his inception--to shape himself at his own sweet will. Thus he became the hero of my study. This is not a book for children or fools--but for men and women who can grasp the underlying principle of morality which has been uppermost in my mind as I wrote. Those who can see beyond the outburst of passion--the overmastering belief in the power of love to justify all