gathered into book-form appeared from time to time in the
pages of St. Nicholas. The approval of those for whom one studies and
labors is the pleasantest and most enduring return.

CONTENTS

ZENOBIA OF PALMYRA: THE GIRL OF THE SYRIAN DESERT

HELENA OF BRITAIN: THE GIRL OF THE ESSEX FELLS

PULCHERIA OF CONSTANTINOPLE: THE GIRL OF THE GOLDEN HORN

CLOTILDA OF BURGUNDY: THE GIRL OF THE FRENCH VINEYARDS

WOO OF HWANG-HO: THE GIRL OF THE YELLOW RIVER

EDITH OF SCOTLAND: THE GIRL OF THE NORTHERN ABBEY

JACQUELINE OF HOLLAND: THE GIRL OF THE LAND OF FOGS

CATARINA OF VENICE: THE GIRL OF THE GRAND CANAL

THERESA OF AVILA: THE GIRL OF THE SPANISH SIERRAS

ELIZABETH OF TUDOR: THE GIRL OF THE HERTFORD MANOR

CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN: THE GIRL OF THE NORTHERN FIORDS

MA-TA-OKA OF POW-HA-TAN: THE GIRL OF THE VIRGINIA FORESTS

ZENOBIA OF PALMYRA: THE GIRL OF THE SYRIAN DESERT.

[Afterward known as "Zenobia Augusta, Queen of the East."] A.D. 250.

MANY and many miles and many days' journey toward the rising sun, over
seas and mountains and deserts,--farther to the east than Rome, or
Constantinople, or even Jerusalem and old Damascus,--stand the ruins of
a once mighty city, scattered over a mountain-walled oasis of the great
Syrian desert, thirteen hundred feet above the sea, and just across the
northern border of Arabia. Look for it in your geographies. It is known
as Palmyra. To-day the jackal prowls through its deserted streets and
the lizard suns himself on its fallen columns, while thirty or forty
miserable Arabian huts huddle together in a small corner of what was
once the great court-yard of the magnificent Temple of the Sun.

And yet, sixteen centuries ago, Palmyra, or Tadmor as it was originally
called, was one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Nature and
art combined to make it glorious. Like a glittering mirage out of the
sand-swept desert arose its palaces and temples and grandly sculptured
archways. With aqueducts and monuments and gleaming porticos with
countless groves of palm-trees and gardens full of verdure; with wells
and fountains, market and circus; with broad streets stretching away to
the city gates and lined on either side with magnificent colonnades of
rose-colored marble--such was Palmyra in the year of our Lord 250, when,
in the soft Syrian month of Nisan, or April, in an open portico in the
great colonnade and screened from the sun by gayly colored awnings, two
young