TALES OF WONDER

by Lord Dunsany





Preface

Ebrington Barracks

Aug. 16th 1916.

I do not know where I may be when this preface is read. As I write it
in August 1916, I am at Ebrington Barracks, Londonderry, recovering
from a slight wound. But it does not greatly matter where I am; my
dreams are here before you amongst the following pages; and writing in
a day when life is cheap, dreams seem to me all the dearer, the only
things that survive.

Just now the civilization of Europe seems almost to have ceased, and
nothing seems to grow in her torn fields but death, yet this is only
for a while and dreams will come back again and bloom as of old, all
the more radiantly for this terrible ploughing, as the flowers will
bloom again where the trenches are and the primroses shelter in
shell-holes for many seasons, when weeping Liberty has come home to
Flanders.

To some of you in America this may seem an unnecessary and wasteful