[Sidenote: 1880.]
Col. Ingham was well pleased, when his boys and girls clustered round
him the next Saturday, to find how many copies of “Marco Polo” they had
found in different libraries, and how much of it they had read, in one
reading-circle and another. They found in it manifold illustrations of
the “Arabian Nights,” which, in its best form,--Lane’s translation,--is
a favorite book in our little circle.
They began to understand what Uncle Fritz had meant, when he said that
Marco Polo seemed accurate when he described what he saw, and that his
exaggerations, or what people called his lies, came in when he was
repeating stories which other people had told.
Esther asked him who Mandeville was, of whom he had said the same thing.
“Mandeville was an Englishman,--Sir John Mandeville,--who went to
Constantinople, Egypt, Palestine, Armenia, and other countries of
Western Asia a little less than two hundred years before Columbus
sailed for America. The exact limits of his absence are said to be the
years 1322 and 1356. It was as dark a time as there was in the Dark
Ages. He was in the military service of one of the Eastern princes,
and had a chance to see travellers from all lands, and to hear their
stories. People told stories in the East then, just as they do now, and
as I sometimes hope they will, one day, do here again.
“For my part, when I am sitting in the rather dingy reading-room of
a third-rate inn, in a fourth-rate town, waiting for my train, which
is not to come till eleven at night, I should be very glad if a good
story-teller would come in and sit down on a mat, and tell me either
the story of Sindbad the Sailor or of Hiawatha and the Arrow-maker, or
of his adventures in the Rebellion. When he passed his hat round, I
should put in my five-cent piece much more willingly than I give it for
the Torra-worra Tell-tale, which only gives me in brief the same news
which I read in the Big Bow-wow the same morning.
“Well, Sir John Mandeville heard these stories told by story-tellers,
just as you may hear them to-day in Cairo or in Damascus. Whether he
wrote them down at once, I do not know; but at some time or other he
wrote them down, and now the whole is mixed up together,--what he saw
himself with what travellers told him and with what story-tellers told
him.
“So you may find bits of ‘Arabian Nights’ in Sir John Mandeville.
“There is so much of this that there came to be a time when people
thought he had rather lie than to tell the truth.
“Indeed,” said Uncle Fritz, “I can remember that at one time his name
was spelled Man-Devil, as if he were quite outside of human nature; but
I believe there is now no doubt that this was his real name.”
Esther said she remembered, in Catlin’s “Indians,” that he told of
some chiefs who had been taken all through the great cities, that
they might understand the power of the whites, and, when they came
back, were wholly disgraced and degraded, because they told such large
stories that nobody could believe they were true.
Uncle Fritz was well pleased with Esther’s good memory, and said it was
just so with Sir John Mandeville.
Bob Edmeston brought the book, which is in a very handy form.[3] In
Bohn’s Library, it is included with many other early journeys to
Palestine. The young people knew the Antiquarian Library already. And
it may be said to other young people, who have a little money to spend
for books, that in Bohn’s various “Libraries” they get as much for
their money--if they find the book they want in the catalogue--as they
can find anywhere.
But the little book did not look as fascinating as the elegant, large
pages crowded with illustrations of Marco Polo.
Uncle Fritz told Bob that when he was a man, and had travelled all
through Asia, he might edit an edition of Sir John Mandeville, as
elegant as Col. Yule’s of Marco Polo.
“You will have to be satisfied now,” said he, “by looking for my
pencil-marks. Or turn to the end. See what I have noticed on the last
page.”
So they turned to the last page, and found that Uncle Fritz had made
an index of the things he liked in the book. This is always a good
thing to do,--if the book is your own, of course. They read aloud the
headings, and came to “The Lady changed into a Dragon.”
“That is the story in Morris’s ‘Earthly Paradise,’” said Uncle Fritz.
“Look a little further.” Esther read on, and he told her to turn back
to the book, and read to them, when she found--