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    Otto of the Silver Hand
    Otto of the Silver Hand
    Otto of the Silver Hand
    Ebook146 pages1 hour

    Otto of the Silver Hand

    By Howard Pyle

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      Yet, though the world's life then was so wicked and black, there yet remained a few good men and women here and there (mostly in peaceful and quiet monasteries, far from the thunder and the glare of the world's bloody battle), who knew the right and the truth and lived according to what they knew; who preserved and tenderly cared for the truths that the dear Christ taught, and lived and died for in Palestine so long ago. 
     
      This tale that I am about to tell is of a little boy who lived and suffered in those dark middle ages; of how he saw both the good and the bad of men, and of how, by gentleness and love and not by strife and hatred, he came at last to stand above other men and to be looked up to by all.  
     
    And should you follow the story to the end, I hope you may find it a pleasure, as I have done, to ramble through those dark ancient castles, to lie with little Otto and Brother John in the high belfry-tower, or to sit with them in the peaceful quiet of the sunny old monastery garden, for, of all the story, I love best those early peaceful years that little Otto spent in the dear old White Cross on the Hill. 
     
    Poor little Otto's life was a stony and a thorny pathway, and it is well for all of us nowadays that we walk it in fancy and not in truth.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCheapest Books
    Release dateFeb 11, 2018
    ISBN9786052259399
    Author

    Howard Pyle

    Howard Pyle (1853-1911) was a celebrated artist, author, and teacher -- and a primary figure in the history of children's literature. Not only did he guide and inspire such artistic talents as N. C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish, and Jessie Willcox Smith, but he was also a master storyteller in his own right. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Pepper & Salt, and The Wonder Clock are among the many stories and folktales that he wrote and illustrated.

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      Book preview

      Otto of the Silver Hand - Howard Pyle

      Otto of the Silver Hand

      [Illustrated]

      Howard Pyle

      Illustrated by Howard Pyle

      ILLUSTRATED &

      PUBLISHED BY

      e-KİTAP PROJESİ & CHEAPEST BOOKS

      www.cheapestboooks.com

      www.facebook.com/EKitapProjesi

      Copyright, 2018 by e-Kitap Projesi

      Istanbul

      ISBN: 978-605-2259-39-9

      © All rights reserved. No part of this book shell be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or by any information or retrieval system, without written permission form the publisher.

      Table of Contents

      About The Book & Author:

      Foreword

      THE DRAGON'S HOUSE

      HOW THE BARON WENT FORTH TO SHEAR

      HOW THE BARON CAME HOME SHORN

      THE WHITE CROSS ON THE HILL

      HOW OTTO DWELT AT ST. MICHAELSBURG

      HOW OTTO LIVED IN THE DRAGON'S HOUSE

      THE RED COCK CROWS ON DRACHENHAUSEN

      HOUSE OF THE DRAGON SCORNER

      HOW ONE-EYED HANS CAME TO TRUTZ-DRACHEN

      HOW HANS BROUGHT TERROR TO THE KITCHEN

      HOW OTTO WAS SAVED

      A RIDE FOR LIFE

      HOW BARON CONRAD HELD THE BRIDGE

      HOW OTTO SAW THE GREAT EMPEROR

      AFTERWORD

      * * *

      About The Book & Author:

      §

      Howard Pyle was an American illustrator, author and teacher who produced dozens of classic illustrated volumes, including fables, fairy tales and adventure stories.

      Howard Pyle was born on March 5, 1853, in Wilmington, Delaware. After studying art, he moved to New York City to work as a magazine illustrator. Returning to Wilmington in 1880, Pyle took on other aspects of book design, creating classic illustrated works like The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. Pyle later taught illustration and founded the Brandywine School of Art, whose attendees included artists N. C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish. Pyle died in 1911.

      Early Life:

      Illustrator, author and teacher Howard Pyle was born on March 5, 1853, in Wilmington, Delaware. Sometimes called the Father of American Illustration, Howard Pyle wrote and illustrated dozens of books, largely fairy tales, fables and other stories. As a child, he read many adventure stories and tall tales, such as Grimm's Fairy Tales. Instead of going to college, Pyle studied art in Philadelphia for three years.

      Professional Career:

      Some of his early works were illustrations and stories for magazines and other periodicals. He moved to New York City in 1876 and struggled to make ends meet until he sold an illustrated article to Harper's Weekly. After returning to Wilmington in 1880, he began working on some of his most memorable books. One such project, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883), proved especially popular. Nearly every inch of the book was created by Pyle; the stories, the illustrations and the type of lettering used. He went on to illustrate dozens of other works, his own stories as well as those by other writers.

      Pyle was also a gifted instructor. After working teaching illustration at Drexel Institute of Art from 1894 to 1900, Pyle started his own art and illustration school, which became known as the Brandywine School. Some of his most notable students included N. C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish.

      * * *

      Otto of the Silver Hand, centers around the life of Otto, the son of a German warlord. His mother dies when she sees her husband hurt, prompting his father to take his newborn son to a nearby monastery to be raised. When Otto reaches eleven his father returns to claim him from the monastery and take him back to live in their ancestral castle.

      Other Books of Pyle:

      * The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883)

      * Men of Iron (1891)

      * * *

      Foreword

      §

      BETWEEN the far away past history of the world, and that which lies near to us; in the time when the wisdom of the ancient times was dead and had passed away, and our own days of light had not yet come, there lay a great black gulf in human history, a gulf of ignorance, of superstition, of cruelty, and of wickedness.

      That time we call the dark or middle ages.

      Few records remain to us of that dreadful period in our world's history, and we only know of it through broken and disjointed fragments that have been handed down to us through the generations.

      Yet, though the world's life then was so wicked and black, there yet remained a few good men and women here and there (mostly in peaceful and quiet monasteries, far from the thunder and the glare of the world's bloody battle), who knew the right and the truth and lived according to what they knew; who preserved and tenderly cared for the truths that the dear Christ taught, and lived and died for in Palestine so long ago.

      This tale that I am about to tell is of a little boy who lived and suffered in those dark middle ages; of how he saw both the good and the bad of men, and of how, by gentleness and love and not by strife and hatred, he came at last to stand above other men and to be looked up to by all. And should you follow the story to the end, I hope you may find it a pleasure, as I have done, to ramble through those dark ancient castles, to lie with little Otto and Brother John in the high belfry-tower, or to sit with them in the peaceful quiet of the sunny old monastery garden, for, of all the story, I love best those early peaceful years that little Otto spent in the dear old White Cross on the Hill.

      Poor little Otto's life was a stony and a thorny pathway, and it is well for all of us nowadays that we walk it in fancy and not in truth.

      THE DRAGON'S HOUSE

      UP from the gray rocks, rising sheer and bald and bare, stood the walls and towers of Castle Drachenhausen. A great gate-way, with a heavy iron-pointed portcullis hanging suspended in the dim arch above, yawned blackly upon the bascule or falling drawbridge that spanned a chasm between the blank stone walls and the roadway that ran winding down the steep rocky slope to the little valley just beneath. There in the lap of the hills around stood clustered the wretched straw-thatched huts of the peasants belonging to the castle—miserable serfs who, half timid, half fierce, tilled their poor patches of ground, wrenching from the hard soil barely enough to keep body and soul together. Among those vile hovels played the little children like foxes about their dens, their wild, fierce eyes peering out from under a mat of tangled yellow hair.

      Beyond these squalid huts lay the rushing, foaming river, spanned by a high, rude, stone bridge where the road from the castle crossed it, and beyond the river stretched the great, black forest, within whose gloomy depths the savage wild beasts made their lair, and where in winter time the howling wolves coursed their flying prey across the moonlit snow and under the net-work of the black shadows from the naked boughs above.

      The watchman in the cold, windy bartizan or watch-tower that clung to the gray walls above the castle gateway, looked from his narrow window, where the wind piped and hummed, across the tree-tops that rolled in endless billows of green, over hill and over valley to the blue and distant slope of the Keiserberg, where, on the mountain side, glimmered far away the walls of Castle Trutz-Drachen.

      Within the massive stone walls through which the gaping gateway led, three great cheerless brick buildings, so forbidding that even the yellow sunlight could not light them into brightness, looked down, with row upon row of windows, upon three sides of the bleak, stone courtyard. Back of and above them clustered a jumble of other buildings, tower and turret, one high peaked roof overtopping another.

      The great house in the centre was the Baron's Hall, the part to the left was called the Roderhausen; between the two stood a huge square pile, rising dizzily up into the clear air high above the rest—the great Melchior Tower.

      At the top clustered a jumble of buildings hanging high aloft

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