* THE CARAVAN * THE HISTORY OF THE SPECTRE SHIP * THE STORY OF THE HEWN OFF HAND * FATIMA'A DELIVERANCE * THE LITTLE MUCK * THE FALSE PRINCE And Other Old Stories.. THE CARAVAN. INTRODUCTION. IN a beautiful distant kingdom, of which there is a saying, that the sun on its everlasting green gardens never goes down, ruled, from the beginning of time even to the present day, Queen Phantasie. With full hands, she used to distribute for many hundred years, the abundance of her blessings among her subjects, and was beloved and respected by all who knew her. The heart of the Queen, however, was too great to allow her to stop at her own land with her charities; she herself, in the royal attire of her everlasting youth and beauty, descended upon the earth; for she had heard that there men lived, who passed their lives in sorrowful seriousness, in the midst of care and toil. Unto these she had sent the finest gifts out of her kingdom, and ever since the beauteous Queen came through the fields of earth, men were merry at their labor, and happy in their seriousness. Her children, moreover, not less fair and lovely than their royal mother, she had sent forth to bring happiness to men. One day Märchen[A], the eldest daughter of the Queen, came back in haste from the earth. The mother observed that Märchen was sorrowful; yes, at times it would seem to her as if her eyes would be consumed by weeping. "What is the matter with thee, beloved Märchen?" said the Queen to her. "Ever since thy journey, thou art so sorrowful and dejected; wilt thou not confide to thy mother what ails thee?" "Ah! dear mother," answered Märchen, "I would have kept silence, had I not known that my sorrow is thine also." "Speak, my daughter!" entreated the fair Queen. "Grief is a stone, which presses down him who bears it alone, but two draw it lightly out of the way."
About the Author: Wilhelm Hauff (1802 - 1827) was a German poet and novelist. Early life * Hauff was born in Stuttgart, the son of August Friedrich Hauff, a secretary in the ministry of foreign affairs, and Hedwig Wilhelmine Elsaesser Hauff. He was the second of four children. * Young Hauff lost his father when he was seven years old, and his early education was practically self-gained in the library of his maternal grandfather at Tubingen, where his mother had moved after the death of her husband. In 1818 he was sent to the Klosterschule at Blaubeuren, and in 1820 began to study at the University of Tubingen. In four years he completed his philosophical and theological studies at the Tubinger Stift. Writings On leaving the university, Hauff became tutor to the children of the famous Wurttemberg minister of war, General Baron Ernst Eugen von Hugel (1774-1849), and for them wrote his Marchen (fairy tales), which he published in his Marchen almanach auf das Jahr 1826 (Fairytale Almanac of 1826). Some of these stories are very popular in German-speaking countries to this day, such as Der kleine Muck (The Story of Little Muck), Kalif Storch (Caliph Stork) and Die Geschichte von dem Gespensterschiff (The Tale of the Ghost Ship)-all set in the Orient; as well as Der Zwerg Nase (Little Longnose), Das kalte Herz (The Cold Heart or The Marble Heart) and Das Wirtshaus im Spessart (The Spessart Inn), set in Germany. * While there, he also wrote the first part of the Mitteilungen aus den Memoiren des Satan (1826; Memoirs of Beelzebub) andDer Mann im Mond (1825; The Man in the Moon). The latter, a parody of the sentimental and sensual novels of Heinrich Clauren (the pseudonym of Carl Gottlieb Samuel Heun, 1771-1854), became in the course of composition, a close imitation of that author's style and was actually published under his name. As a result, Clauren brought and won an action for damages against Hauff, whereupon Hauff followed up the attack in his witty and sarcastic Kontroverspredigt uber H. Clauren und den Mann im Mond (1826) and attained his original object: the moral annihilation of the mawkish and unhealthy literature with which Clauren was flooding the country.