SHE

By H. Rider Haggard

First Published 1886.

IN EARTH AND SKIE AND SEA
STRANGE THYNGS THER BE

Doggerel couplet from the Sherd of Amenartas

I inscribe this history to

ANDREW LANG

in token of personal regard and of my sincere admiration for his learning and his works

PREPARER'S NOTE

This text was prepared from an 1888 edition published by Longmans, Green, and Co., London. A number of fragments of Greek text, and sketches, have been omitted due to the difficulty of representing them as plain text. However, small fragments of Greek have been transcribed in brackets "{}" using an Oxford English Dictionary alphabet table, without diacritical marks.

SHE

INTRODUCTION

In giving to the world the record of what, looked at as an adventure only, is I suppose one of the most wonderful and mysterious experiences ever undergone by mortal men, I feel it incumbent on me to explain what my exact connection with it is. And so I may as well say at once that I am not the narrator but only the editor of this extraordinary history, and then go on to tell how it found its way into my hands.

Some years ago I, the editor, was stopping with a friend, "vir doctissimus et amicus neus," at a certain University, which for the purposes of this history we will call Cambridge, and was one day much struck with the appearance of two persons whom I saw going arm-in-arm down the street. One of these gentlemen was I think, without exception, the handsomest young fellow I have ever seen. He was very tall, very broad, and had a look of power and a grace of bearing that seemed as native to him as it is to a wild stag. In

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