Project Gutenberg's Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15), by Charles Morris

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15)
The Romance of Reality

Author: Charles Morris

Release Date: July 15, 2005 [EBook #16298]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORIC TALES, VOL. 1 (OF 15) ***

Produced by David Kline, David Cortesi and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Transcriber's note: in this pure-ASCII edition, a small number of
non-ASCII characters have been encoded as follows: ['e] and [`e]
for accented E; [^e] and [^o] for E and O with circumflex; and
[:i] for I with an ulaut.

['E]dition d'['E]lite

Historical Tales

The Romance of Reality

By

CHARLES MORRIS

Author of "Half-Hours with the Best American Authors,"
"Tales from the Dramatists," etc.

IN FIFTEEN VOLUMES

Volume I

American

I

J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON

Copyright, 1893, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
Copyright, 1904, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
Copyright, 1908, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.

[Illustration: WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE.]

PREFACE.

It has become a commonplace remark that fact is often
stranger than fiction. It may be said, as a variant of this,
that history is often more romantic than romance. The pages
of the record of man's doings are frequently illustrated by
entertaining and striking incidents, relief points in the
dull monotony of every-day events, stories fitted to rouse
the reader from languid weariness and stir anew in his veins
the pulse of interest in human life. There are many
such,--dramas on the stage of history, life scenes that are
pictures in action, tales pathetic, stirring, enlivening,
full of the element of the unusual, of the stuff the novel
and the romance are made of, yet with the advantage of being
actual fact. Incidents of this kind have proved as
a