"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."
Dark and gloomy grew the kingdom of the gnomes in proportion as the light of each individual inhabitant decreased. Many who formerly were like luminous spheres, shedding radiant rays to a considerable distance, now became like dim will-o’-the-wisps, or merely phosphorescent dots or firebugs. As...
Chapter 7 I was now tolerably well satisfied. From the abject state of a nobody, existing only as a “subject” for scientific observation, looked upon as a hobgoblin, and doomed to vivisection prisoner of a jumping-jack, I had suddenly become somebody of importance, owing to my...
Chapter 6 Adalga, like all the rest of the gnomes, was a spirit, in the same sense as we are spirits ourselves; the term “spirit” implying a centre of consciousness or intelligence, irrespective as to whether the form in which that spiritual power or energy dwells...
Chapter 5 We arrived at the king’s palace, a description of which will undoubtedly interest the reader, and I only regret my inability to do full justice to this subject. The palace consisted of an extensive building of white alabaster upon a rose-coloured marble foundation, and with...
Chapter 4 While I was sleeping I experienced a horrible dream. The jumping-jack before me assumed the features of a baboon, having a great resemblance to Professor Cracker, and besides this there were two grotesque figures standing at the foot of the pole. One was wooden...
It seems that during the consternation caused by this event, I must have unconsciously wandered off, for when I gathered my senses again, I found myself in a strange labyrinth of rocks. In vain I tried to find my way back to the Dragon’s Den;...
Part Three of Eight. The main body of the instrument consisted of a wooden box in which the four above-named mirrors were placed so as to face each other, and to the box was attached a telescope-tube. Thus a ray of light coming from an outside...
About a thousand feet below the summit of the Untersberg, and not very far from the top of one of its spurs, that reaches out into the valley through which runs the limpid stream coming from the renowned lake called the “Koenigsee,” there is a...
Who has ever occupied himself seriously with the investigation of the “night-side of Nature,” or studied the works of Theophrastus Paracelsus, and not become acquainted with the celebrated “Untersberg” (the “mountain of the lower world”) and its mysterious inhabitants, the fairies and gnomes? Like a...
