The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Master Key, by L. Frank Baum

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Title: The Master Key
An Electrical Fairy Tale

Author: L. Frank Baum

Posting Date: July 20, 2008 [EBook #436]
Release Date: February, 1996

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MASTER KEY ***

Produced by Dennis Amundson.

The Master Key

An Electrical Fairy Tale

Founded Upon The Mysteries Of Electricity
And The Optimism Of Its Devotees. It Was
Written For Boys, But Others May Read It

by

L. Frank Baum

Contents

--Who Knows?--
1. Rob's Workshop
2. The Demon of Electricity
3. The Three Gifts
4. Testing the Instruments
5. The Cannibal Island
6. The Buccaneers
7. The Demon Becomes Angry
8. Rob Acquires New Powers
9. The Second Journey
10. How Rob Served a Mighty King
11. The Man of Science
12. How Rob Saved a Republic
13. Rob Loses His Treasures
14. Turk and Tatar
15. A Battle With Monsters
16. Shipwrecked Mariners
17. The Coast of Oregon
18. A Narrow Escape
19. Rob Makes a Resolution
20. The Unhappy Fate of the Demon

Who Knows?

These things are quite improbable, to be sure; but are they impossible?

Our big world rolls over as smoothly as it did centuries ago, without a
squeak to show it needs oiling after all these years of revolution.
But times change because men change, and because civilization, like
John Brown's soul, goes ever marching on.

The impossibilities of yesterday become the accepted facts of to-day.

Here is a fairy tale founded upon the wonders of electricity and
written for children of this generation. Yet when my readers shall
have become men and women my story may not seem to their children like
a fairy tale at all.

Perhaps one, perhaps two--perhaps several of the Demon's devices will
be, by that time, in popular use.

Who knows?

1. Rob's Workshop

When Rob became interested in electricity his clear-headed father
considered the boy's fancy to be instructive as well as amusing; so he
heartily encouraged his son, and Rob never lacked batteries, motors