it abounds in
good-humored satire of human follies that are
found in all ages and countries. Sancho Panza
represents the type of person who does not have
imagination or spiritual ideals. Not much less
ridiculous, though much more deserving of
sympathy, is Don Quixote, who represents the
type of person who is controlled by imagination
and fanciful ideals, unbalanced by practical
judgment. The life of a person of either type
must be filled with absurdities.

The following selections are taken from
_Stories of Don Quixote_ retold by H. L.
Havell.

STORIES FROM DON QUIXOTE

I. DREAMS AND SHADOWS

The scene is laid in a village of La Mancha, a high and arid district of
Central Spain; and the time is towards the close of the sixteenth
century. On the outskirts of the village there stood at the time
mentioned a house of modest size, adjoining a little farm, the property
of a retired gentleman whose real name was Quisada or Quijada, but who
is now known to all mankind by the immortal title of Don Quixote. How he
came to alter his name we shall see presently.

On a hot summer afternoon this worthy gentleman was sitting in a small
upper room, which served him as a study, absorbed in the contents of a
huge folio volume, which lay open on the table before him. Other
volumes, of like bulky proportions, were piled up on chairs or strewn on
the floor around him. The reader was a man some fifty years of age, tall
and spare of figure, and with high, stern features of the severest
Spanish type. In his eyes, when from time to time he paused in his
reading and gazed absently before him, there was a look of wild
abstraction, as of one who lives in a world of dreams and shadows. One
hand, with bony, nervous fingers, rested on the open page; with the
other he grasped his sword, which lay sheathed on his lap.

No sound disturbs the sultry stillness of the chamber, save only the
droning of an imprisoned bee and the rustling of paper when the eager
student turned a leaf. Deeper and deeper grew his absorption; his eyes
seemed to devour the lines, and he clutched his hair with both hands, as
if he would tear it out by the roots. At last, overpowered by a frenzied
impulse, he leaped from his seat, and plucking his sword from the
scabbard, began cutting and thrusting at some invisible object, shouting
in a voice of thunder: "Unhand t