A Necklace of Stories Author:Moncure Daniel Conway Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: My mother told me, as every mother in Croatoan tells her children, the legend of our tribe, and every week, on the day when its curtain is regularly withdrawn, I... more » came to gaze on the picture of our first Queen. Once, when the first shade of twilight was falling, and others had gone away, I remained alone in this room gazing up to the blue eyes ; when lo, they appeared to beam with life, the lips parted, and a gentle voice came to my ear—' Thou hast succeeded in contending with others; contend now with thyself!' As these words were uttered, a hand shook me; it was that of the doorkeeper, who said, ' This is not the place to sleep ; you came near being locked up here for the night!' It had been a dream; but it remained with me. " How to contend with myself! As years came on it became plain enough what self it was with which I had to contend; but, alas! this self outleaped and outran me. On one occasion I succeeded. Our tribe had annual games on thegreat Queen's birthday, and once had offered a fine prize to the youth who should first reach a certain goal. In that race I ran. My swiftest competitor was a youth whom I had previously surpassed in various contests. This time, however, he kept abreast of me for some distance, and the chances were even on his side ; but suddenly, when we were distant from the crowd, a dog ran across his path and barked before him ; this threw him back, and I won the race. No one saw his disaster but myself; the defeated youth said nothing about the dog. The judges came with dancing maidens to give me the prize. But over their heads I saw the beaming blue eyes, the moving lips which bade me contend with myself; so, by our Queen's grace, I was enabled to decline the prize, and, having told the incident of the dog, claimed for my antagonist another race. I...« less